The book of the it : psychoanalytic letters to a friend / by Georg Groddeck. Authorized translation furnished and revised by the author.

  • Georg Groddeck
Date:
1928
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Licence: In copyright

Credit: The book of the it : psychoanalytic letters to a friend / by Georg Groddeck. Authorized translation furnished and revised by the author. Source: Wellcome Collection.

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    3 Lina s heart-trouble upon my unconscious sensitivity, there grew e pre erence for dealing with chronic cases, acute disease mak- mg me impatient. That is roughly, what I can tell you about my choice of a pro¬ fession. But if you will only reflect a little, all sorts of things will occur to you in connection with my attitude to science. For anyone who from childhood upwards has had his attention di¬ rected to one particular invalid will find it difficult to learn how to classify things systematically according to the rubric. And then, too, there is that very important question of imitation. My father was a heretic in medicine; he was his own authority, went his own ways, right or wrong, and showed no respect for science either in word or in deed. I still remember how he scoffed at the hopes that were raised by the discovery of the tubercle and the choiera bacilli, and with what glee he recounted how, against all physiological teaching, he had fed an infant for a whole year on bouillon. The first medical book which he put into my hands—I was at that time still a lad at the Gymnasium— was the empirical teaching of Rademacher, and since in that book the points conflicting with scientific teaching are heavily underlined and plentifully sprinkled with marginal comments, it is no matter for surprise if already from the beginning of my studies I was disposed to doubt. This disposition to doubt was in yet other ways determined. When I was six years old I lost for a time the exclusive com¬ panionship of my sister. She gave her affection to a school friend called Alma, and, what was terribly hard to bear, she taught our little childish sadistic games to this new friend and shut me out from them. On one solitary occasion I managed to overhear the two girls while they were at their favourite occu¬ pation of telling stories. Alma was making up a tale about an angry mother who punished her disobedient child by putting it into a privy-pit (one must picture for that a primitive country closet). To this day it sticks in my memory that I did not hear the conclusion of this story. The friendship between the two little girls came to an end, and my sister returned to me, but that period of loneliness was enough to inspire me with a deep distaste for the name of Alma. And here I must certainly remind you that atji University calls itself Alma Mater. That gave me a strong prejudice against science, all the greater because the term “alma mater” was alsö
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