Why War? Why Not Peace? Santideva's Answer to Einstein's Famous Question to Freud

Abstract

Reviewing Sigmund Freud's essays and correspondence during World War I, we find that for the most part he minimized or denied the impact the war was having on him and his patients. Just as Sandor Ferenczi's emphasis on the impact of “real” childhood events and the “real” relationship between patient and analyst was seen as aberrant, so too was Ferenczi's warning Freud to leave Germany in 1933 treated as paranoia. Freud's later works apply his psychoanalytic theories to society as a whole but do not consider ways to “cure” social ills, so it is not surprising that Freud didn't hear Albert Einstein's famous question, Why War? as a plea for insight into how to end war. The author suggests a reconsideration of Einstein's question from the perspective of Buddhist psychology and finds a more optimistic albeit difficult answer.

Notes

¹Falzeder and Brabant (1996), The Correspondence of Sigmund Freud and Sandor Ferenczi (Vol. 2, pp. 291–292).

²Pfeiffer (1966), Sigmund Freud and Lou Andreas-Salomé Letters, pp. 91–93.

³Falzeder and Brabant (1996), pp. 36–38.

⁴Falzeder (2002), The Complete Correspondence Between Sigmund Freud and Karl Abraham, p. 251.

⁵Falzeder (2002), p. 264.

⁶I was informed after writing this paper that the idea of a “clash of civilizations” is actually quite politically charged and was first used by Huntington (1997).

⁷Jane Lopacka Counseling & Mediation Services Ltd.

⁸Falzeder and Brabant (2000), The Correspondence of Sigmund Freud and Sandor Ferenczi (Vol. 3, pp. 447–448).

⁹Falzeder and Brabant (2000), pp. 448–449.

¹⁰Cited by Jones, 1957, p. 179.

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Sue A. Shapiro

Sue A. Shapiro, Ph.D., is a Supervising Analyst at New York University Postdoctoral Program in Psychotherapy and Psychoanalysis. She is on the faculty of the Mitchell Center, is Associate Editor of Gender and Sexuality, and is Associate Editor of Contemporary Psychoanalysis.