‘Why War?’: The Freud-Einstein Letters
War in the Mind: Psychoanalysing the origins of war
Introduction: Freud and Einstein on War
In 1931, the Institute for Intellectual Cooperation invited Albert Einstein to a cross-disciplinary exchange of ideas about politics and peace with a thinker of his choosing. He selected Sigmund Freud, whom he had met briefly in 1927 and whose work, despite being skeptical of psychoanalysis, the legendary physicist had come to admire. A series of letters followed, discussing the abstract generalities of human nature and the potential concrete steps for reducing violence in the world.
In a twist of irony, the correspondence was only published in 1933 — after Hitler, who would eventually banish both Einstein and Freud into exile, rose to power — in a slim limited-edition pamphlet titled Why War?. Only 2,000 copies of the English translation were printed, most of which were lost during the war. But the gist of the correspondence, which remains surprisingly little-known, is preserved in the 1960 volume Einstein on Peace, featuring a foreword by none other than Bertand Russell.
The initial letter came from Einstein, who posed the question, ‘Is there any way of delivering mankind from the menace of war?’ Freud sets out his response, exploring various aspects of human nature which illustrate how war appears virtually inevitable.
Why should we study killing? One might just as readily ask, Why study sex? The two questions have much in common. Every society has a blind spot, an area into which it has great difficulty looking. Today that blind spot is killing. A century ago it was sex.
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