American Imago

The Mysterious Object

My first guess about the hidden object is that it is one earpiece of a binaural stethoscope. But why at his age would he be carrying such an instrument? He had long since abandoned medical practice in favor of a new way of looking at illness, so why would he continue to carry a half-concealed stethoscope? Binaural instruments were in long-time use in his medical school and practice years before this photo was taken. The stethoscope had been invented by the French physician Laennac in 1816; Golding Bird had developed a stethoscope [End Page 739] with one earpiece in 1840 that was supplanted mostly by the binaural model soon after in 1852.

Ever since the stethoscope was invented, it became the identifying "trademark" of the medical profession, a symbol of pride of membership in a noble profession. Even retired physicians often retain the prefix of "doctor" with a permanent sense of belonging to a select group. Disaffected physicians do not readily relinquish this identifying affiliation, even with disapproval of their profession's flaws. Is it possible that, despite Freud's perennial disaffection with his doctor identity, he had never betrayed his homage to an experiential journey that had, in many ways, sparked his innovative embarkation on a new way of understanding the relationship between mind and body?

Could this be an echo of Freud's debt to his medical roots? A permanent transitional object, companion to the antiquities on his desk? Pictures of and references to his prized possessions, his consulting room and couch abound, but I have not seen pictures of or read of his doctor tools (otoscope, sphygmomanometer, reflex hammer, etc.) except for his doctor's bag (residing in London's Freud Museum), at the ready for his reputed housecalls. The meticulous accounting of every object in Freud's study (admittedly, after he had moved to Hampstead in 1938) in which one detects only the professor and perhaps the doctor, but reveals only a few art works of a medical nature (particularly of his mentor Charcot), and no accessories of the medical profession (Spector, 1972).

Further, my curiosity turned to the awkward relationship of Freud and psychoanalysis vis-a-vis medicine and medical education, reflected variously in work on his Project for a Scientific Psychology, the matter of lay analysis (infra vide), relationships with other physicians and medical/neurological practice.

Ambivalence toward Medicine

Freud's fluctuating ambivalent encounter with medicine and the medical profession began early. Like many adolescents his age, he considered a variety of career paths. His father would have relished having the young Freud join him in business, but he did not urge him in any direction. Freud mulled over the [End Page 740] usual choices of law, medicine, teaching, and even philosophy. Transiently, he was impressed with a student who chose politics as a life endeavor. But listening to a lecture on Goethe's essay On Nature profoundly whetted his appetite to understand the world more deeply and humanistically, believing that a medical education was most likely to satisfy this craving.

However, not long after medical school matriculation, disenchantment set in. As a medical student, he soon found that the traditional curriculum did not at all fulfill his expectations. He absented himself from many required courses in favor of more inspiring interests. For example...