W. H. Auden’s 1940 poem, “In Memory of Sigmund Freud,” takes on renewed relevance today. He extolls Freud as “no more a person now but a whole climate of opinion.” Yet he also warns that this “climate” is vulnerable to powerful interests who see it as a threat.
Not limited to the consulting room, the Freudian “climate of opinion” permeates our culture. Auden says it encourages people “to remember like the old and be honest like children.” The aim is “to recite the Past like a poetry lesson till sooner or later it faltered at the line where long ago the accusations had begun, and suddenly knew by whom it had been judged.” Freud’s “climate” encourages us to repudiate these judges so as “to approach the Future as a friend.”
The salutary effect of this “climate of opinion” infuses clinical work, but also academic studies and the arts. High-brow or low, post-Freudian artists repudiate “judges;” they often set aside figuration in painting, narrative in dance, tonality in music, and prudery in literature, enabling them to create works of emotional depth and immediacy. Leading us from the internalized judgments of our individual and collective past, these artists facilitate diversity, culturally, ethnically, and sexually.
When Auden wrote his poem Nazi Germany had been burning books and had mounted a derisive display of “Degenerate Art.” He understood the limits of Freud’s “climate”: it had not been able to change “the monolith of State” and “the co-operation of avengers.” Of Freud and his “climate,” he adds, “Like weather he can only hinder or help, the proud can still be proud but find it a little harder.” He also says of Freud, “the tyrant…doesn’t care for him much,” an ironic understatement. In actuality, the tyrant fears and despises the Freudian “climate.” Auden’s timely warning tells us not to be complacent. Sustaining Freud’s “climate” in the face of “proud” judges from all political corners will take work.
