Freud and the SS man on Berggasse
anecdote · Sigmund Freud ·
retold in 5 talks
SS thugs entered Freud's apartment; the image is read as dignified old European culture (Freud) facing the new barbarism (SS). But the SS man saw himself as defending European culture against the barbarism of modernity epitomized by Freud, showing that the civilization/barbarism distinction is internal to both sides.
≤2000talks it is told in, per year2026
As told 5
“the SS guy perceived and legitimized himself as a defender of European culture and its spiritual values against the barbarism of modernity with its focus on economy and sex”
“What was Freud's mistake in his most famous case, the treatment of Wolfman? ... After October Revolution he lost money. And Freud was too good. Freud helped him.”
“Freud's official myth in Totem and Taboo... Lacan does something quite convincing here he turns it around.”
What it carries
one story, many jobs: the ideas this anecdote is deployed to argue, one tally mark per use (an idea page shows the same relation from the other end, as its shelf of stories)
contents · one story, 3 jobsuses
obscene openness
×1
ideology as non-ideology
×1
money as a guarantee of not getting involved
×1
Its cast and sources
populated by
Robert Conquest2John le Carré2Christina1Carla Bruni1Carl von Ossietzky1Anna Moffo1Medea1Mikhail Bulgakov1
alongside works
Every retelling 5
4:52 First as Tragedy, then as Farce – The Double Death of Neoliberalism and the Idea of Communism2009-11-25 · 59:47
SS thugs entered Freud's apartment; the image is read as dignified old European culture (Freud) facing the new barbarism (SS). But the SS man saw himself as defending European culture against the barbarism of modernity epitomized by Freud, showing that the civilization/barbarism distinction is internal to both sides., illustrating obscene violence,ideology appearing as non-ideology
Freud treated the Wolfman, a Russian nobleman who lost his wealth after the Revolution. Freud helped him financially, failing to enforce the fee, which Žižek implies was a clinical mistake regarding the symbolic function of payment., illustrating money as a guarantee of not getting involved
Freud’s book on Moses is 'ruined' because his teleological, genetic positivism cannot accommodate the idea that Moses is an exceptional element triggering a new order, whereas Lacan’s retroactive logic handles it better., illustrating psychoanalysis,hegel-dialectics
13:49 XLII Sigmund Freud Lecture by Slavoj Žižek: Theology, Negativity, and the Death-Drive2015 · 1:49:50
Freud finds his patient forgot everything about the analysis; this forgetting opens the void in subjectivity, linking analysis to love., illustrating knowledge to be forgotten,void in the midst of our subjectivity
44:22 Slavoj Žižek Masterclass: Jacques Lacan: A Lateral Introduction. Part 6pub. 2018-11-28 · 1:39:14
Freud's Leistungen (parapr slips) are not failures revealing a pre-existing deep meaning, but failures that retroactively produce meaning., illustrating symptomatic failure is productive