The book of the it : psychoanalytic letters to a friend / [Georg Walther Groddeck].

  • Georg Groddeck
Date:
[1935]
Catalogue details

Licence: In copyright

Credit: The book of the it : psychoanalytic letters to a friend / [Georg Walther Groddeck]. Source: Wellcome Collection.

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    and upon life as a sane and ordinary human being, or as a madman, an exceptional individual who has forsaken ordinary standards.” This indeed I have done with great thoroughness, and still do, as you know only too well. The two mothers—the wet nurse and my mother- found a new and necessary support, and my position between the two was made bearable to me through half¬ madness; it led me from the compulsion of doubting, to a patient scepticism and irony, to the world of Thomas Weltlein’s thought.* It is possible that I am mistaken in the value I put upon this phrase, “half-mad,” but it explains for me the curious qualities of my nature, which usually avoids two alternatives, but which never¬ theless is able to follow two opposing, even contradictory trains of thought at the same time, undisturbed by contempt, every advice, every example, and despite my own inner disinclination. In a careful examination of the history of my life, I have found that this half¬ madness has given me just that amount of ascendency which my It required for the mastery of its problems, In this connection my medical career—for me at least— is significant. Twice I have adopted new methods in medicine, and have so absorbed and refashioned them that they have become my own personal possessions; once as the apprentice of Schweninger, the second time as the disciple of Freud. For me, each one of these men represents something mighty and inescapable. The year ’83 has crept in as especially important in its influence upon my external existence. This corres¬ ponds to its prominent position as the end figures in the mystery number 26,783. Soon after that remark about masturbation, I fell ill with scarlet fever, as a result of which I contracted nephritis. Later, as you know, I went through another illness of the same character. I mention this because this kidney disease—it holds true for me and for all people with kidney trouble—is characteristic of a double attitude toward life, of standing between two things. The kidney person—if I may use this expression—is facing two ways. His It is * Thomas Weltlein, the hero of “Der Seelensucher.” [A romance written by Dr. Groddeck, Int. Psychoanalytischer Verlag.]
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