So now we have it - Sigmund Freud, the father of psychoanalysis, inventor of
free association, transference and the Oedipus complex has quite a bit to say
about that great evil. I’m taking about Cocaine. The Cocaine
Papers is a collection of papers featuring Freud’s writing and thoughts on the
subject, personal and professional. His conclusions;
Cocaine can increase
alertness and libido, improve reaction time, depress hunger and serve as an
anesthetic, but it is also, for some people at least, habit-forming, and that’s
of course not all. We understand these days the impact of illicit drug use in the community including
premature death, crime, mental health disorders, and other blood borne viruses,
etc.
The publication of 'Cocaine
Papers' presents the complete and authoritative versions of Freud's important texts,
widely referred to as 'the cocaine papers.' Written between 1884 & 1887, they
are a significant contribution to the fields of psychology, pharmacology, and
social history.
The stories and accounts are
often repeated, albeit sometimes, not always, from different perspectives. Freud
was looking to make a name for himself and achieve fame and fortune so as to be
able to marry his “beloved treasure,” Martha Bernays, and thought he had come
upon the means for that with the then legal drug cocaine.
On April 21, 1884, a 28-year-old
researcher in the field now called neuroscience sat down at the cluttered desk
of his cramped room in Vienna General Hospital and composed a letter to his
fiancée, Martha Bernays, telling her of his recent studies: “I have been
reading about cocaine, the effective ingredient of coca leaves,” Sigmund Freud
wrote, “which some Indian tribes chew in order to make themselves resistant to
privation and fatigue.” And not too much later, less than a month later, Freud
was writing to Bernays about the many self-experiments in which he had
swallowed various quantities of the drug, finding it useful in relieving brief
episodes of depression and anxiety. Later, he described how “a small dose
lifted me to the heights in a wonderful fashion. I am just now busy collecting
the literature” — in German, French and English — “for a song of praise to this
magical substance.”
Included in this work are
Freud’s ‘Cocaine Dreams,’ which show just how brilliant was his analytical
mind. As with his early position on the causes of “Hysteria” (sexual abuse as
cause) and was mostly right with regards to cocaine, but abandoned his position
because of peer pressure.
