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What is the price of Experience? Do men buy it for a song?
Or wisdom for a dance in the street? No, it is bought with the price
Of all that a man hath, his house, his wife, his children,
Wisdom is sold in the desolate market where none come to buy,
And in the wither' d field where the farmer plows for bread in vain.
William Blake, 'Vala: Night the Second'
Lies nicht mehr - schau!
Schau nicht mehr - geh!
[Do not read any more - look!
Do not look any more – go!]
Paul Celan, 'Engführung'
Sigmund Freud (1856-1939) and Ludwig Wittgenstein (1889-1951) were both Viennese: Freud lived most of his life there but died in London; Wittgenstein was brought up in Vienna but spent many years in England, teaching at Cambridge where he died.
Freud created psychoanalysis and Wittgenstein is perhaps the greatest 20th-century philosopher.
Wittgenstein was familiar with Freud's early work - especially the Interpretation of Dreams and his Jokes and their Relation to the Unconscious - and often quoted from them. Indeed, Wittgenstein's sister had a short analysis with Freud and was mainly responsible for helping him escape from the Nazis. Living in Vienna in the 1920s enabled Wittgenstein to be familiar with the practice of analysis. Friends and relations looked to it as a way out of their personal problems.
Wittgenstein was influenced by Freud's work and thought his own work was a therapy too. He was greatly impressed - although critical- when he first read Freud, and wrote:
Unless you think very clearly psycho-analysis is a dangerous & foul practice, & it's done no end of harm &, comparatively, very little good.
Wittgenstein's therapy and its relation to psychoanalysis will be the theme of this book.
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