Dominic de Guzman
Marco Polo
Girolamo Fracastoro
René Laennec
Sigmund Freud
Dr. Joe Ova
We welcome Aphrodite known to most as the Greek goddess of love, beauty, pleasure, and procreation.
Friday, February 7, 2020
A few short lives of Aphrodite
Dominic de Guzman
Marco Polo
Girolamo Fracastoro
René Laennec
Sigmund Freud
Dr. Joe Ova
We welcome Aphrodite known to most as the Greek goddess of love, beauty, pleasure, and procreation.
Why is sexuality such a powerful aspect of creation?
Why is sex for many so irresistible, even when faced with the consequences of such risks like unwanted child births, family breakups, or even catching deadly diseases?
“Sexuality is necessary for creation. Without it, procreation is not possible. It is the ultimate physical display of “love”. It is as powerful as it is because it is experienced and expressed in so many varieties of ways. It is expressed in thoughts, fantasies, desires, beliefs, attitudes, values, behaviors, practices, roles, and relationships. These may manifest themselves in biological, physical, emotional, social, or spiritual aspects.
The biological and physical aspects of sexuality largely concern the human reproductive functions and the basic biological drive that exists in all species.
Physical and emotional aspects of sexuality include bonds between individuals that is expressed through profound feelings or physical manifestations of love, trust, and care. Spirituality concerns an individual's spiritual connection with others. Sexuality affects and is affected by cultural, political, legal, philosophical, moral, ethical, and religious aspects of life.
Human sexuality is driven by 2 forces - genetics and emotions, or nature and nurture. The genetics we are born with are provided by nature and are non changeable. The emotions we develop are provided by nurture and constantly change.
Freud believed that sexual drives are instinctive and he explained them by actions and behaviors that had not been accepted before his proposal. His instinct theory said humans are driven from birth by the desire to acquire and enhance bodily pleasures, thus supporting the nature debate. Freud redefined the term sexuality to make it cover any form of pleasure that can be derived from the human body. He also claimed that pleasure lowers tension while displeasure raises it.
John Locke believed that our mind is a blank slate and that the environment is where one develops one's sexual drives.
In my next life I was born Dominic in Spain and became a Castilian priest, the founder of the Dominican Order and after my death was canonized the patron saint of astronomers.
My father was an honored and wealthy man of his village and his brother, my uncle was an archbishop. I was educated in the schools of Palencia where I devoted 6 years to the arts and 4 years to theology. When I was 21 years old, and Spain was desolated by famine, I gave away my money and sold my clothes, furniture and even precious manuscripts to feed the hungry. 3 years later, I became a Benedictine priest. When I was 33 years old, I went on a diplomatic mission for Alfonso VIII, King of Castile, to secure a bride in Denmark for crown prince Ferdinand. The marriage negotiations ended successfully, but the princess died before leaving for Castile.
I began a program in the south of France to convert the Cathars, a Christian religious sect with gnostic and dualistic beliefs, which the Roman Catholic Church deemed heretical. As part of this, Catholic-Cathar public debates were held. I concluded that only preachers with real sanctity, humility and asceticism could ever win over Cathars.
When I was 45, I moved in with 6 followers to a house given to us by a rich resident of Toulouse. I saw the need for a new type of organization to address the spiritual needs of the growing cities of the era, one that would combine dedication and systematic education with more organizational flexibility than either monastic orders or the secular clergy. I subjected myself and my companions to the monastic rules of prayer and penance; and meanwhile the bishop gave us written authority to preach throughout the territory of Toulouse. In the same year, the year of the Fourth Lateran Council, the bishop and I went to Rome to secure the approval of the Pope, Innocent III. I returned to Rome a year later with granted written authority by the new pope, Honorius III for an order to be named "The Order of Preachers" that became to be known as the Dominican Order.
A lady who I received into my new order, described me as thin and of middle height having a fair and handsome face, reddish hair, beard, beautiful eyes, long and fine hands and a pleasing resonant voice.
Although I traveled extensively to maintain contact with my growing brotherhood of friars, I made my headquarters in Rome. When I was 49 years old, Pope Honorius III invited me and my companions to take up residence at the ancient Roman basilica of Santa Sabina. Before that time the friars had only a temporary residence in Rome at the convent of San Sisto Vecchio, which Honorius III had given to us around 1218, intending it to become a convent for a reformation of nuns in Rome under my guidance. The official foundation of my convent at Santa Sabina occurred with the legal transfer of property from Pope Honorius III to my order when I was 52 years old. It was transformed 300 years later into the College of Saint Thomas Aquinas and 300 years after that into the Pontifical University of Saint Thomas Aquinas.
I was a vegetarian and observed fasts and periods of silence, selected the worst accommodations and the cheapest clothes, and never allowed myself the luxury of a bed. When traveling, I lectured and prayed the entire way. On entering the towns and villages, I took off my shoes, and, however sharp the stones or thorns, I trudged on my way barefooted. I praised God even in the worst of weathers and discomforts and never complained.
Exhausted with the austerities and labors of my career, weary and sick with a fever, I made the monks lay me on some sacking stretched upon the ground and the brief time that remained to me was spent in exhorting my followers to have charity, to guard their humility, and to make their treasure out of poverty. Then I died. I was only 51 years old.
The Rosary has continued for centuries after I died to be at the heart of the Dominican Order. For centuries, Dominicans have been instrumental in spreading the rosary and emphasizing the Catholic belief in the meditative power it has.
13 years later I was canonized under the authority of Pope Gregory IX,. Although I became a saint, many of my followers became devils in disguise while they were alive. 10 years after I died, the office of the Inquisition was established and many Dominican monks took on the role of inquisitors and tortured people till they died. As if they were exterminating rats that were threatening their physical safety, zealous and over enthusiastic Dominican inquisitors were exterminating heretics who they claimed were threatening their moral well-being. The preaching of the Dominican order proved to be a formidable and immoral opponent in the lands of Reformation, as they preached that burning Protestants alive was not only a moral thing to do, but also a necessary action to save the Catholic Church.
I was a Venetian merchant traveler whose travels to China are recorded in “The Travels of Marco Polo” a book that introduced Europeans to Central Asia and China. I learned the mercantile trade from my father and uncle, who traveled through Asia and met Kublai Khan. In 1269, they returned to Venice to meet me for the first time. The 3 of us then embarked on an epic journey to Asia, returning after 24 years to find Venice at war with Genoa. I was imprisoned and dictated my stories to a cellmate. I was released in 1299 and became a wealthy merchant, married, and had 3 children. I was not the first European to reach China, but I was the first to leave a detailed chronicle of my experience. “The Travels of Marco Polo” inspired Christopher Columbus and many other travelers and greatly influenced European cartography.
I was born in Venice. My father Niccolò Polo was a merchant trading with the Near East. After Constantinople was taken over by crusaders from the Byzantine Greeks in 1204, Niccolò and his brother Maffeo left their families behind and set up a business in Constantinople, the gate way to the Silk Road used by European traders to trade with China. In 1260, while residing in Constantinople, they foresaw a political change. They liquidated their assets into jewels and moved away and traveled east to the Levant. Their decision to leave Constantinople proved timely. The following year, the ruler of the Nicene Empire conquered Constantinople and promptly burned the Venetian quarter and re-established the Eastern Roman Empire. Captured Venetian citizens were blinded, while many of those who managed to escape perished aboard overloaded refugee ships fleeing to other Venetian colonies in the Aegean Sea.
The Nicene Empire was the largest of the 3 Byzantine Greek states founded by the aristocracy of the Byzantine Empire that fled after Constantinople was occupied by Western European and Venetian forces during the Fourth Crusade between 1202 and 1204. The crusade was a Western European armed expedition called by Pope Innocent III, originally intended to reconquer Muslim-controlled Jerusalem by means of an invasion through Egypt. Instead, a sequence of events culminated in the Crusaders sacking the city of Constantinople, the capital of the Christian-controlled Byzantine Empire. In 1261, the Nicaeans restored the Byzantine Empire in Constantinople.
My mother died, and an aunt and uncle raised me. I received a good education, learning mercantile subjects including foreign currency, appraising, and the handling of cargo ships. In 1269, when I was 15, Niccolò and Maffeo returned to Venice, and met me for the first time.
When I was 17 years old, my father, my uncle and I set off for Asia on the series of adventures that ended up to be documented in “The Travels of Marco Polo”. We returned to Venice 24 years later with many riches and treasures. We had traveled almost 24,000 km. At this time, Venice was at war with the Genoa. I was on a galley equipped with a boulder throwing sling to join the war and was taken captive by Genoans in a skirmish.
I spent several months of my imprisonment dictating a detailed account of my travels to a fellow inmate, Rustichello da Pisa, a professional writer of romances, who intended to write a bestseller. Earlier, he wrote the “Romance of King Arthur” the earliest known romance by an Italian author derived from a book of in the possession of Edward I of England, who ruled England from 1272 till 1307 and who passed through Italy on his way to fight in the Ninth Crusade and last crusade to the Holy Land. It was about the Muslim knight Palamedes and King Arthur`s Round Table. King Arthur was a legendary King of Camelot who led the defense of Britain against Saxon invaders between 400 and 500.
His new book about me and my journey to China soon spread throughout Europe and became known as “The Travels of Marco Polo”. It depicted our journey throughout Asia, giving Europeans their first comprehensive look into the inner workings of the Far East, including India, China, and Japan.
I was finally released from captivity in 1299 when I was 45 years old. I returned home to Venice, where my father and uncle in the meantime had purchased a large palazzo. For such a venture, my family invested profits from trading. My family's company continued its activities and I soon became a wealthy merchant. My uncle Maffeo and I financed other expeditions, but never left Venetian provinces, nor returned to the Silk Road and Asia.
“The Travels of Marco Polo” opens with a preface describing my father and uncle traveling to the Levant where they were invited to go to China to meet Kublai Khan, who had never met Europeans. In 1266, they reached the seat of Kublai Khan at Beijing, China. Kublai received the brothers with hospitality and asked them many questions regarding the European legal and political system. He also inquired about the Pope and Church in Rome and tasked them with delivering a letter to the Pope, requesting 100 Christians acquainted with the Seven Arts - grammar, rhetoric, logic, geometry, arithmetic, music and astronomy. Kublai Khan requested that an envoy bring him back oil of the lamp in Jerusalem. They returned to Venice in 1269 to await the nomination of the new Pope, which allowed me to see my father for the first time, at the age of 15. The 3 years between the death of Pope Clement IV in 1268 and the election of his successor Pope Gregory X in 1271 delayed the Polos in fulfilling Kublai's request.
Once the new pope was elected, my father Niccolò, my uncle Maffeo and I embarked on our voyage to fulfill Kublai's request. We sailed to Acre, and then rode on camels to the Persian port of Hormuz. We wanted to sail straight into China, but the ships there were not seaworthy, so we continued overland on the Silk Road, until we reached Kublai's summer palace in Zhangjiakou. In one instance during our trip, we joined a caravan of traveling merchants whom we crossed paths with. Unfortunately, the party was soon attacked by bandits, who used the cover of a sandstorm to ambush us. We managed to fight and escape through a nearby town, but many members of the caravan were killed or enslaved. Three and a half years after leaving Venice, when I was 21 years old, we were welcomed by Kublai into his palace where we presented the sacred oil from Jerusalem and the papal letters to Kublai.
I knew 4 languages, and my family had accumulated a great deal of knowledge and experience that was useful to Kublai. I became a government official and wrote about many imperial visits to China's southern and eastern provinces, the far south and Burma. Highly respected and sought after in the Mongolian court, Kublai Khan decided to decline our requests to leave China. We became worried about returning home safely, believing that if Kublai died, his enemies might turn against us because of our close involvement with the ruler. In 1292, Kublai's great-nephew, then ruler of Persia, sent representatives to China in search of a potential wife. When the lucky lady was found, we were asked to bring her and her entire wedding party to Persia with a fleet of 14 ships. We sailed to the port of Singapore, traveled north to Sumatra, sailed west to the port of Jaffna and to Pandyan of Tamilakkam. Eventually we crossed the Arabian Sea to Hormuz. The 2 year voyage was a perilous one. Of the 600 people in the convoy, only 18 survived. We left the wedding party after reaching Hormuz and traveled overland to the port of Trebizond on the Black Sea.
In 1323, I was confined to bed, due to illness. A year later, despite physicians' efforts to treat me, I died at the age of 70.
In my next life, I was born to become a prominent Italian physician, poet and scholar in astronomy, mathematics and geography. I propagated the philosophy of atomism and firmly declined appeals to hidden causes in scientific examination. I was the very first to describe syphilis and typhus.
I was born in Verona, Republic of Venice and educated at Padua. When I was 22 years old, I married and was blessed with a daughter and 4 sons. 2 of my sons died at a very early age. I received my medical degree when I was 24 years old after which I started teaching logic and anatomy at the academy where I came across Copernicus, who entered the academy to study medicine 1 year before I graduated. A war between Venice and the Roman Emperor Maximilian I took place 6 years later, resulting in closure of the university. I fled to live near the border of Veneto where I practiced medicine. I returned to Verona when I was 31 years old, practicing medicine and also managing the estate on the shores of Lake Garda, which I inherited from my father. During the subsequent years, I built up relationships with renowned scientists, philosophers and prominent personalities.
It was not till the earlier part of the 16th century that geological phenomena began to attract the attention of the Christian nations. At that period a very animated controversy sprung up in Italy, concerning the true nature and origin of marine shells, and other organized fossils, found abundantly in the strata of the peninsula. When I was 39 years old, excavations that were made for repairing the city of Verona, brought to light a multitude of curious petrifactions that caused many to speculate on the fossil shells that were dug up. I declared that fossil shells had all belonged to living animals, which had formerly lived. I exposed the absurdity of explaining fossils to a certain 'plastic force,' which it was said had power to fashion stones into organic forms. I demonstrated the futility of attributing the situation of the shells in question to the Mosaic deluge, the Biblical narrative in which the great flood, sent by God in the act of divine retribution flooded the entire world killing all the animals except those that were in Noah`s ark. That inundation I observed, was too transient, it consisted principally of fluviatile waters; and if it had transported shells to great distances, it must have strewed them over the surface, not buried them at vast depths in the interior of mountains. My clear and philosophical views were disregarded and the talent and argumentative powers of the learned were doomed for 300 years to be wasted in the discussion of 2 simple and preliminary questions. Firstly, whether fossil remains had ever belonged to living creatures; and secondly, whether, if this be admitted, all the phenomena could be explained by the biblical deluge.
At the same time that the geological phenomena attracted the attention of the Christian nations, an inexplicably transmitted, devastating, and incurable epidemic was spreading wildly, affecting an alarming population. I called this disease “syphilis”. Long after I died, it was found that syphilis was a sexually transmitted infection caused by bacteria. It was seen that there were 4 stages in the disease, primary, secondary, latent, and tertiary. The signs and symptoms of syphilis varied depending in which of the 4 stages was presented. The latent syphilis lasted for years and there were little to no symptoms.
Syphilis came to be known as "the great imitator" as it caused symptoms similar to many other diseases. Syphilis was found to be most commonly spread through sexual activity and was also transmitted from mother to baby during pregnancy or at birth. The name of this disease, ‘Syphilis’ was derived from my lengthy poem which I began composing in 1510 when I was 32 years old. Later it was considered my most famous work. The 1,300-verse epic entitled “Syphilis, the French disease” blended fact and fantasy. The 3 volumes were published 20 years later and they became extremely famous. The first volume explained the agony of this disease. The second volume described the treatment and preventions, in a fancy story of cause and cure. The third volume comprised 2 legendary stories.
The first story illustrated Christopher Columbus's voyage to the West Indies where the disease was irrepressible among the natives. I described that the natives were the offspring of the lost city, Atlantis. As chastisement for its evil, the gods cursed the city with the awful disease before plunging the city into deep oceans, followed by violent earthquakes. It was in the West Indies that Columbus found out the holy guaiacum tree, consisting of such medicines which could cure the disease.
The second fable revealed how a young shepherd named ‘Sifilo’ cursed the Sun god, Apollo. In his anger, Apollo punished the shepherd with the disease and ‘Sifilo’ pacified the God to get rid of his disease. Juno, the Roman goddess of marriage and queen of the gods offered the healing guaiacum tree. The name of the disease “syphilis” was derived from this legend. In ancient days, such epidemics were considered as a reprimand from God and caused due to natural occurrences like phases of the moon. I discarded such theories and beliefs and studied to find out the origins, causes and transmission of such diseases. My medical instructors considered that theology and science are separated from each other.
I proposed that epidemic diseases were caused by transferable tiny particles or "spores" that could transmit infection by direct or indirect contact or even without contact over long distances. In my writing, the "spores" of diseases referred to chemicals rather than to living entities. My theory remained influential for nearly 300 years, before being superseded by a fully developed germ theory. Because of my incredible works, I was nominated as the physician to the Council of Trent when I was 67 years old by Pope Paul III.
When I was 75 years old, I suffered a stroke and died the same day.
Long after I died, I became to be considered as ‘the forerunner of the germ theory of infectious diseases.
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René Laennec (1781–1826)
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René Laennec (1781–1826)
I was a French physician. I invented the stethoscope and pioneered its use in diagnosing various chest conditions. I became a lecturer and a professor of medicine.
I was born in France. My mother died of tuberculosis when I was 5 years old, and I went to live with my great-uncle who was a priest. When I was 12 years old, I learned English and German and began my medical studies under my uncle's direction. My father was a lawyer and discouraged me from continuing as a doctor so I took a break and took long walks in the country, danced, studied Greek and wrote poetry. My father soon changed his mind and when I turned 18 he agreed that I return to study medicine at the University of Paris under several famous physicians. There I was trained to use sound as a diagnostic aid. Corvisart one of the physicians I studied under advocated the re-introduction of percussion during the French Revolution.
Percussion was used by Avicenna about 1000 years before for diagnosing purposes. It was a method of tapping on a surface to determine the underlying structure, and was used in clinical examinations to assess the condition of the thorax or abdomen. It was one of the 5 methods of clinical examination, together with visual inspection, palpation - feeling with the fingers and hands, auscultation - listening to the internal sounds of the body, and inquiry – talking with the patent.
Percussion was done with the middle finger of one hand tapping on the middle finger of the other hand using a wrist action. The non-striking finger was placed firmly on the body over tissue. There were 2 types of percussion: direct, which used only one or two fingers, and indirect, which used the middle/flexor finger. There were 4 types of percussion sounds: resonant, hyper-resonant, stony dull or dull. A dull sound indicated the presence of a solid mass under the surface. A more resonant sound indicated a hollow, air-containing structure. As well as producing different notes they also produce different sensations in the finger.
One day I observed schoolchildren playing with long, hollow sticks. The children held their ear to one end of the stick while the opposite end was scratched with a pin; the stick transmitted and amplified the scratch.
When I was 35 years old, I was consulted by a young woman laboring under general symptoms of diseased heart, and in whose case percussion and the application of the hand were of little avail on account of the great degree of her fatness. Although putting my ears on her chest was prohibited due to her age and sex, that never stopped me from doing such useful and necessary diagnosis. She was greatly overweight and so were her breasts which were one of the biggest that I ever had the fortune to see and examine. When I placed my head between the cleavages of her breasts to listen to her heart, I not only could not hear anything other than my own heart beats but I nearly suffocated. Then I had a great idea. I took a sheet of paper and rolled it into a cylinder tube and worked it between her breasts. She blushed as I was working my tube deeper until it was fully inserted. When I put my ears to it I got very excited at what I heard. At first I thought that I was hearing my own heart skip more beats that it had beats. Then I realized that I was hearing her heart clearer, louder and more distinct than I have ever heard a heartbeat before. The throbs got me more excited and my excitement just got her excited.
When I was 38 years old, I wrote the classic treatise on percussion. In it I described how I discovered the instrument later developed into what was called a stethoscope. Just like microscopes were used for closely looking at objects too small to see, stethoscopes were used for listening to sounds too faint to hear.
I had discovered that the new stethoscope was superior to the normally used method of placing the ear over the chest, particularly if the patient was overweight.
My clinical work allowed me to follow chest patients from bedside to the autopsy table. I was therefore able to correlate sounds captured by my new instrument with specific pathological changes in the chest, in effect pioneering a new non-invasive diagnostic tool. I presented my findings in a conference and one year after my nephew diagnosed me to have tuberculosis using my stethoscope. Shortly I died of tuberculosis at the age of 45. The modern stethoscope with 2 ear pieces was invented 25 years after I died.
I was an Austrian Jewish neurologist best known for my theories of the unconscious mind and the defense mechanism of repression. I was also known for creating the clinical practice of psychoanalysis for treating psychopathology through dialogue between a patient and a psychoanalyst. I was renowned for my redefinition of sexual desire as the primary motivational energy of human life, as well as for my therapeutic techniques, including the interpretation of dreams as sources of insight into unconscious desires.
I was born to Jewish parents in Freiberg, Czechoslovakia. Both my parents were from Ukraine and were struggling financially when I was born, the first of 8 children. When I was 3 years old, we left Freiberg to live in Vienna. When I was 9 years old, I entered a prominent high school.
When I was 17, I proved to be an outstanding pupil and graduated with honors and was admitted to the University of Vienna. I loved literature and was proficient in German, French, Italian, Spanish, English, Hebrew, Latin and Greek. I wanted to study law, but my mother wanted me to be a medical doctor and convinced me to join the medical faculty. There my studies included philosophy, physiology, and zoology all under distinguished professors. One memorable time during my studies was when I spent 4 weeks in my professor's zoological research station in Trieste, dissecting hundreds of eels in an inconclusive search for their male reproductive organs.
When I was 25, I graduated with an MD degree. I began my medical career at the Vienna General Hospital. My research work in cerebral anatomy led to the publication of a seminal paper on the palliative effects of cocaine 2 years later. As a medical researcher, I was an early user and proponent of cocaine as a stimulant as well as analgesic. I believed that cocaine was a cure for many mental and physical problems. I wrote several articles recommending medical applications, including its use as an antidepressant. I also recommended cocaine as a cure for morphine addiction. Over a 3-year period, I worked in various departments of the hospital. My time spent in a psychiatric clinic in a local asylum led to an increased interest in clinical work. When I was 29 years old, my substantial body of published research led to my appointment as a volunteer university lecturer in neuropathology. Although I didn't receive a salary. I met a lot of interesting scholars and gained a lot of contacts.
I read Friedrich Nietzsche`s works as a student, and analogies between my work and that of Nietzsche were pointed out almost as soon as I developed a following. I was a great admirer of his, and in 1900, the year Nietzsche died, I bought his collected works. I hoped to find in Nietzsche's works the words for much that remained mute in me. My understanding of human psychology was greatly derived from Shakespeare's plays. My Jewish origins were of significant influence in the formation of my intellectual and moral outlook, especially with respect to my intellectual non-conformism.
I went to Paris on a fellowship to study with Jean-Martin Charcot, a renowned neurologist who was conducting scientific research into hypnosis. It was a great experience that turned me toward the practice of medical psychopathology and away from a less financially promising career in neurology research. Charcot specialized in the study of hysteria and susceptibility to hypnosis, which he frequently demonstrated with patients on stage in front of an audience. A year later I set up in private practice and began using hypnosis in my clinical work. I adopted the approach of my friend and collaborator, Josef Breuer, in a use of hypnosis which was different from the French methods I studied in that it did not use suggestion. I found that during hypnosis, patients were more freely able to talk about their problems and were able to retrieve long forgotten memories of traumatic incidents that were the cause of their neurosis and the symptoms of their neurosis were reduced in severity. I was thus able to analyze dreams to reveal the complex structuring of unconscious material. This led me to demonstrate the psychic action of repression which underlay symptom formation.
When I was 31 years old, I resigned my hospital post and entered private practice specializing in "nervous disorders". The same year I married Martha, the granddaughter of a chief rabbi in Hamburg. We had 6 children. 9 years later, my wife's sister's fiancé died, and she moved in with us.
I had abandoned hypnosis and was using the term "psychoanalysis" to refer to my new clinical method and the theories on which it was based. My development of these new theories took place during a period in which I experienced heart irregularities, disturbing dreams and periods of depression which I linked to the recent death of my father and which prompted a "self-analysis" of my own dreams and memories of childhood. My explorations of my feelings of hostility to my father and rivalrous jealousy over my mother's affections led me to fundamentally revise my theory of the origin of the neuroses.
On the basis of my early clinical work, I postulated that unconscious memories of sexual molestation in early childhood were a necessary precondition for the psychoneuroses as seen in hysterical and obsessive behaviors. I argued that it did not matter whether infantile sexual scenarios were real or imagined and in either case they became pathogenic when acting as repressed memories. This transition from the theory of infantile sexual trauma as a general explanation of how all neuroses originate to one that presupposes an autonomous infantile sexuality provided the basis for my subsequent formulation of the theory of the Oedipus complex. My redefinition of sexuality included its infantile forms. This was a child's unconsciously repressed desire, to have sexual relations with the parent of the opposite sex. I proposed that boys and girls experience the Oedipus complex differently. Boys experienced a form of castration anxiety. Girls experienced a form of penis envy. I claimed that unsuccessful resolution of the Oedipus complex led to neurosis, pedophilia, and homosexuality. In adult life, this led to a choice of a sexual partner who resembles one's parent.
I created a discipline I called psychoanalysis. The goal of psychoanalysis was to bring repressed thoughts and feelings into consciousness in order to free the patient from suffering repetitive distorted emotions. To bring unconscious thoughts and feelings to consciousness, I developed therapeutic techniques such as the use of free association. Free association involved the mental process by which one word or image spontaneously suggested another without any necessary logical connection. The importance of free association was that the patients spoke for themselves, rather than repeating the ideas of the analyst. This allowed them to work through their own material, rather than parroting another's suggestions. It was brought about by encouraging patients to talk about dreams and engage in free association in which patients spontaneously report their thoughts without reservation. For better understanding of the patient's feelings, I discovered transference - the redirection of feelings and desires and especially of those unconsciously repressed experiences retained from childhood. Psychoanalysis remained influential within psychology, psychiatry, and psychotherapy.
I proposed that the human psyche could be divided into 3 parts: Id, ego and super-ego. I claimed that the id is the completely unconscious, impulsive, childlike portion of the psyche that operates on the "pleasure principle" and is the source of basic impulses and drives. It seeks immediate pleasure and gratification. The super-ego is the moral component of the psyche. The ego attempts to exact a balance between the id and the super-ego. It is the part of the psyche that is usually reflected most directly in a person's actions. When overburdened or threatened by its tasks, the ego may employ defense mechanisms such as denial, repression, undoing, rationalization, and displacement - where the mind substitutes either a new aim or a new object for goals felt in their original form to be dangerous or unacceptable.
I postulated the existence of libido, energy with erotic attachments, and a death drive, the source of compulsive repetition as seen in obsessive behavior, hate, aggression and neurotic guilt. In my later work I developed a wide-ranging interpretation and critique of religion and culture.
When I was 43 years old, I published “The Interpretation of Dreams” in which I gave detailed interpretations of my own and my patients' dreams in terms of wish-fulfillment. I believed that interpreting dreams provided important insights into the formation of neurotic symptoms and contributed to the mitigation of their pathological effects.
2 years later I at last realized my long-standing ambition to be made a university professor. My title "professor extraordinarius" was important to me for the recognition and prestige it conferred, there being no salary or teaching duties attached to the post. Despite support from the university, my appointment for a full time position as a university professor was blocked in successive years by the political authorities because I was Jewish, and it was secured only with the intervention of one of my more influential ex-patients, a Baroness who had to bribe the minister of education with a painting. With my prestige thus enhanced, I continued with the regular series of lectures on my work which I had been delivering for the past 15 years to small audiences every Saturday evening at the lecture hall of the University of Vienna psychiatric clinic.
A year later, a number of Viennese physicians who had expressed interest in my work were invited to meet at my apartment every Wednesday afternoon to discuss issues relating to psychology and neuropathology. This group was called the Wednesday Psychological Society and it marked the beginnings of the worldwide psychoanalytic movement. I founded this discussion group at the suggestion of the physician who was convinced about the benefits of psychoanalysis because I successfully treated him for a sexual problem. The gatherings followed a definite ritual. First, one of the members would present a paper. Then, black coffee and cakes were served; cigar and cigarettes were on the table and were consumed in great quantities. After a social quarter of an hour, the discussion would begin. The last and decisive word was always spoken by me. It was like a church service with me as the prophet preacher. Within 4 years, my group had grown to 16 members. Carl Jung and Ludwig Binswanger, both of whom worked in a mental hospital in Zuerich, Switzerland traveled to Vienna to visit me and attend the discussion group and established a small psychoanalytic group in Zürich.
When I was 55 years old, the first women members were admitted to our group. Tatiana Rosenthal and Sabina Spielrein were both Russian psychiatrists and graduates of the Zürich University medical school. Prior to the completion of her studies, Spielrein had been a patient of Jung. Both women went on to make important contributions to the work of the Russian Psychoanalytic Society. My early followers met together formally for the first time in Salzburg. This meeting became to be the first International Psychoanalytic Congress. Important decisions were taken at the Congress with a view to advancing the impact of my work. Psychoanalytic societies and institutes were established in Switzerland in 1919, France in 1926, Italy in 1932, and the Netherlands, Norway and Jerusalem in 1933. The New York Psychoanalytic Institute was founded in 1931.
I had been smoking tobacco since I was 24 years old. I believed that smoking enhanced my capacity to work and that I could exercise self-control in moderating it. Despite health warnings from colleagues I remained a smoker. I claimed that addictions, including that to smoking cigars, were substitutes for masturbation which I called "the one great habit." On hindsight it would have been much wiser just to masturbate. When I was 67 years old, I detected a benign growth associated with my heavy smoking, on my mouth that turned cancerous. My speech had become seriously impaired by the prosthetic device I needed as a result of a series of operations on my cancerous jaw.
In 1933 when I was 77 years old, the Nazis took control of Germany, and my books were prominent among those they burned and destroyed. I quipped: "What progress we are making. In the Middle Ages they would have burned me. Now, they are content with burning my books". I continued to maintain my optimistic underestimation of the growing Nazi threat and remained determined to stay in Vienna, even after 1938 when Nazi Germany annexed Austria and the outbreaks of violent anti-Semitism began. The shock of the detention and interrogation of my daughter Anna by the Gestapo finally convinced me it was time to leave Austria.
My departure for London had become stalled, mired in a legally tortuous and financially extortionate process of negotiation with the Nazi authorities. The Nazi-appointed Kommissar, Sauerwald, who was put in charge of my assets proved to be sympathetic to my plight. He studied chemistry at Vienna University under the professor who was a long-time friend of mine, and had a respect for my professional standing despite his Nazi Party allegiance. Expected to disclose details of all my bank accounts to his superiors and to destroy the historic library of books I held, he did neither. Instead he removed evidence of my foreign bank accounts to his own safe-keeping and arranged the storage of my book collection in the Austrian National Library where it remained until the end of the war. Though his intervention lessened the financial burden of the "flight" tax on my declared assets, other substantial charges were levied in relation to the debts and the valuable collection of antiquities I possessed.
Unable to access my own accounts, I turned to Princess Marie Bonaparte, the most eminent and wealthy of my French followers. She traveled to Vienna to offer her support and it was she who made the necessary funds available that allowed Sauerwald to sign the necessary exit visas for me, my wife and my daughter. We left Vienna on the Orient Express accompanied by our household staff and a doctor, arriving in Paris the following day where we stayed as guests of Princess Bonaparte before travelling overnight to London.
Many famous names were soon to call on me to pay their respects, notably Salvador Dalí, Stefan Zweig, Leonard Woolf, Virginia Woolf and H. G. Wells. Princess Bonaparte arrived to discuss the fate of my 4 elderly sisters left behind in Vienna. Her subsequent attempts to get them exit visas failed and they all died in Nazi concentration camps. In our new family house in London, I continued to see patients there until the terminal stages of my illness.
In 1939, my cancer of the jaw was causing me increasingly severe pain and had been declared to be inoperable. I turned to my doctor, friend and fellow refugee, reminding him that we had previously discussed the terminal stages of my illness and agreed that when all hope of recovery was lost, I would end my own life. My daughter Anna wanted to postpone my death, but my doctor convinced her it was pointless to keep me alive and he then administered doses of morphine that resulted in my death.
Joe Ova was born in the year 3,100 in New York City. His father was a distinguished philosopher, scientist, engineer, and business man who conceived and developed Heaven Inc. a high security storage facility for human brains. 1,000 years ago, Willem Kolff showed that organs that keep brains alive could be manufactured. Eventually all organs, except for the brain were replaced by miniature artificial organs. It was known that brain cells were the only cells in the human body that did not reproduce and die. Brains cells lived as long as they were supported by organs that provided nourishment and sensations. The cells making the organs that supported the brain and kept it alive however multiplied and divided and died. Each new cell that was born from an older cell dividing before it died was not perfect and over many divisions, mistakes accumulated to the point where the cell was so degraded as to not function correctly. Eyes became blind, ears became deaf and organs became diseased as people aged. As the organs degraded because of their degraded cells, the brain eventually died a slow death. When organs were replaced by artificial organs, it was seen that the brain could be kept alive indefinitely. People became brains in robot bodies, and lived as long as their robot bodies functioned. Unfortunately natural disasters, crime, careless accidents or deliberate suicides destroyed robot bodies which resulted in the death of brains and people dying. To solve this unavoidable death and achieved immortality, Heaven Inc. was built whereby brains were stored in high security vaults and robot bodies were controlled remotely.
Joe Ova married Dr Lucy Fer, a daughter of a colleague of Joe's father. Together, they lived a very long life. Nature eventually died of a technology over-dose and when that wasn't bad enough, humanity was forced to flee earth when it was feared that the sun would no longer support planet Earth. They went thru a black hole where they found a universe that they could settle in. Having taken with them all the genes from all the life forms, they populated their new universe with life. Combining genes from different life forms, they were able to create a new life form they called “new-man”.
“New-man” eventually convinced Joe and Lucy to search for the god that they had long ago forsaken and forgotten. Joe and Lucy eventually found the god they were seeking and realized that their assumed immortality was actually an immoral prison. They were able to see that in order to get a new life, you had to die.
Dying in the highly secure Heaven Inc. was not easy but there was a loophole that Joe used to kill himself. That was to kill his son. Once Joe was dead, he was able to share with us some of his past lives. They are documented in Part 6 of a book called “A Short History of a Long Future”, the book you are reading right now.
When his wife Lucy Fer tried the same trick to get herself killed, she was placed in an extra high security place called Hell. Inc. Joe and Chris took on new lives in the Universe that they managed to escape from in an attempt to rescue Lucy. Joe became the pet poodle of Gabriel, the chief administrator of Hell Inc. while Chris took on a new life as a “New-man”.
They were able to rescue Lucy and both Lucy and Chris were able to kill themselves and thus return home to us. Unfortunately Joe got left behind and ended up as the very first immortal pet in a new Heaven Inc. made for pets.
Unfortunately, Joe is still alive, and his current life is not complete to be shared. Life is like a book, and Joe's life is still being written at this moment. You cannot share your life until it is over - and it is not over until you are dead.
The End
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