record.
There is no doubt that in his decision to write his autobiography Stekel was influenced by Jean Jacques Rousseau’s Confessions. He had always deplored the fact that in world literature only a few autobiographies were sufficiently intimate and frank for the analyst-reader to evaluate the personality of the author involved. Stekel admired the rare courage and brilliant insight of the French philosopher so much that he made a thought-provoking psychological analysis of Rousseau’s personality through his writings.1
Stekel hoped that his own autobiography would be used in a similar way as a source for analytic research. As a brain specialist might will his own brain to medical investigators, so did the author of the ten-volume work on Disorders of the Instincts and Emotions wish to leave the account of his own instincts and emotions for the benefit of the students of psychoanalysis.
Such was the way of the real Stekel. When the great teacher and practitioner was no longer able to instruct in lecture halls or clinics, when he could no longer introduce live patients to demonstrate the intricacies of psychotherapy, he took the one available subject—himself—and posed it in the nude, stripped of every conventional reserve.
In his account of himself Stekel tried hard to be unbiased; however, his success in this respect was little more than that of some of his own patients who submitted prepared autobiographical data to him. He was not able to duplicate the vein of the masochistic exhibitionist Rousseau, whose memoirs were extraordinarily revealing because they constituted a form of self-exposure and self-chastisement. The student of psychoanalysis can see in Stekel’s notes how many of his own complexes remained obscure to him, can detect his unresolved narcissism, his overcompensated feelings of inadequacy; will smile when he reads that the man who was a master in ferreting out other people’s repressions believed that he had hardly any himself. Then there is Stekel’s failure to recognize his affect-heavy attitude toward his teacher, Freud, upon whom he tried in vain to transfer his own father-complex.
But the analytical reader will also appreciate in Stekel the great clinician and psychologist, the erudite man of letters, the warm-hearted lover of the arts. To the mind of this editor come the words of Conrad Ferdinand Meyer, the Swiss poet whom Stekel liked to quote:
“I’m not a book that’s filled with clever fiction;
I am a human heart with all its contradiction.”2
Stekel was both persevering and impatient; shrewd and naive. Was it an accident that it was he who discovered the principle of bipolarity of human emotions?3
Stekel’s Autobiography is more than a personal narrative. It breathes the air of old Vienna and recaptures the charm of the cosmopolitan Europe that was. It throws an interesting light upon an early phase of the psychoanalytic movement in which the author played a prominent part. He describes the intimate gatherings of Freud, Alfred Adler, and himself where they discussed ways and means to introduce psychoanalysis to medicine. Later as co-editor with Freud of Zentralblatt für Psychoanalyse he writes of the search for landmarks in a new field, of the discouragements and disagreements, and finally of world-wide acceptance of their theories.
The editor has tried to select with discrimination those details of Stekel’s intimate life which he deemed essential for the understanding of the author’s personality. Whenever the blue pencil has been wielded, it has been done with full respect for the author’s text and theme.
In the Autobiography, in addition to photos, various members of Stekel’s school are briefly introduced as well as miscellaneous biographical material presented by the editor.
1 “Jean Jacques Rousseau. Analysis of an Exhibitionist.” Chapter XXV of Stekel’s Psychosexueller Infantilismus, Urban & Schwarzenberg, Vienna, 1922.
2 “Ich bin kein ausgeklügelt Buch;
Ich bin ein Mensch mit seinem Widerspruch.”
3 This psychological phenomenon was rediscovered by the Swiss, Eugene Bleuler, who termed it “ambivalence,” the name by which Freud introduced it into psychoanalysis.
INTRODUCTORY NOTE
by
MRS. HILDA STEKEL
London
MY HUSBAND, Wilhelm Stekel, ended his life voluntarily in London on June 25, 1940. Thus, suffering humanity lost one of its great healers. In his farewell letter, my husband asked me to publish his Autobiography. He suggested that I shorten the manuscript and write a last chapter dealing with his illness and death.
The publication of this Autobiography, a matter so close to my heart, was delayed by the intricate events of world history. I am, therefore, pleased and deeply touched because my husband’s last wish is now fulfilled; and I am most grateful to the American Journal of Psychotherapy and to the Liveright Publishing Corporation for their readiness to honor the deceased by publishing his last work.1
Within the covers of this small volume is the essence of Wilhelm Stekel’s work and personality. The book also renders a service to the public, to the author’s many pupils, followers, readers, colleagues, and patients in all parts of the world by informing them of the real reasons for his suicide, the motives of which have been misinterpreted by some newspapers and scientific journals and by many individuals.
I asked Dr. Emil A. Gutheil of New York City to undertake the difficult task of revising my husband’s Autobiography. I felt that I was too close to the subject to treat it with the desired editorial impartiality. Dr. Gutheil, as one of Dr. Stekel’s first pupils and most faithful friends, appeared best suited for the assignment. I thank him on this occasion for his splendid achievement.
Dr. Stekel began writing the story of his life while he was still in Vienna. He had finished his Technique of Analytical Psychotherapy2 and felt an urge to conclude his literary work with an autobiography. He hoped that by publishing a frank and unbiased account of his own life he might be able to contribute some constructive ideas to the problems of education, mental hygiene, and the prophylaxis of nervous disorders.
Three days before the war started I returned from Norway to England. I had visited my daughter, Dr. Erica Wendelbo, who had gone to Norway after we had fled from Vienna, and married there. I joined my husband who was in the country at this time. Writing his autobiography offered my husband a welcome stimulation and helped him to weather the tense atmosphere of these first weeks after the outbreak of the war.
Our plans were unsettled. We had contemplated a long stay in the country. However, when my husband finished his autobiography he could not endure country life any longer and returned to London. He stayed at the hotel where we had lived upon our arrival in England. Today, I regret that we had no chance to have a home and that it was his fate to die “homeless” in more than one sense.
I could not accompany him to London because I was convalescing after a serious operation and was in poor physical and mental condition. My aged mother and I lived with a friend, Miss Elna Kallenberg, now Mrs. F. L. Lucas, in Cambridge. Elna’s kindness and companionship were indeed helpful as we strove to endure the depressing and uncertain lot of refugees. I am fulfilling my husband’s wish when I thank our “Guardian Angel” in this way.
I also take this opportunity to thank Mr. Fritz Mumenthaler of Berne, Switzerland, who, by storing my husband’s precious library, saved it from destruction. I owe it to this noble-minded man, who previously
