Beth,
I think Groucho said it too.
Have you ever seen a citation for that often quoted, quotable quote? I haven't. If you find it, please let me know, because I believe the context will tell more about what Sigmund may have meant by what he said. No one has ever been able to cite the quotation for me. I've just made a quick attempt to find it, unsuccessfully, but I'll post a question on the list serve for the American Psychoanalytic Association and some of my colleagues may be able to help. To Freud nothing was ever only what it is. But it does seem that he was no exception when it came to being human and prefering to not analyze some things about himself. He was said to be quite stubborn about it. And the popularity of that so often quoted quotation attests, I think to the wish on all our parts to deny the symbolism behind our behaviors, symptoms, fantasies, dreams and choices. It's simply not necessary to analyze everything, although it might have been in Freud's best interest to have been more willing and successful in analyzing his cigar smoking. He died a very painful death caused by his long years of cigar smoking. But he did love his cigars. And they gave him much pleasure. And there's something very good to be said for that. We can only guess what it meant to him since he wasn't apparently very willing to think or speak about it. He did once hint however that he thought it was related to a compulsion to masturbate. And we can all see very clearly the phallic nature of a cigar as well as certain oral pleasures. Freud was very interested in sex. Laugh.
The following is what I did find, these two from "More Than A Cigar" by Evan Elkin
Freud adamantly insisted that cigars were a part of his life that was to remain insulated from the observing eye of psychoanalysis. The famous quote captures this sentiment: "Sometimes a cigar is just a cigar."
And:
And for Freud himself cigars were rich in symbolic value. In fact, contrary to the quote attributed to him, for Freud a cigar was never just a cigar. Cigars and smoking are central to understanding Freud's life, his work and his own personality.
And this from Peter Gay, Freud's biographer, not about cigars, but instead about the arts and Lear:
"What Freud left behind, even among sympathetic readers, was the thought that to reduce culture to psychology seems no less one-sided than to study culture while leaving out psychology altogether. Appearances to the contrary, Freud did not take his view of the arts in order to discredit them wholly. Whether it is made of wit or suspense, of dazzling color or persuasive composition, the aesthetic mask hiding primitive passions provides pleasure. I helps to make life tolerable to maker and audience alike. Thus, for Freud, the arts are a cultural narcotic, but without the long-range costs that other drugs exact. The task of the psychoanalytic critic, then, is to trace the various ways in which reading and listening and seeing actually generate aesthetic pleasure, without presuming to judge the value of the work, it's author, or it's reception. Freud needed no one to tell him that the fruit need not resemble the root and that the garden's loveliest flowers lose none of their beauty because we are made aware that they grow from malodorous manure." Freud A Life For Our Time, p. 323.
And another interesting little tidbit about Freud and Lear also from the Peter Gay book"
" . . . Freud confessed to Ferenczi that his "little daughter" Anna had led him to thoughts of Cordelia, King Lear's youngest, thoughts that generated a moving meditation on the roll of women in a man's life and death. . ." p. 433
Cav,
My patients are psychoanalytic patients. I'm a psychoanalyst, of the Freudian variety.
