The pandemic in retrospect: Sigmund Freud and Spanish influenza

Dear Editor,

It is a strange world we are living in now, as COVID-19 has ravaged through the heart and soul of mankind, one can only shudder at the thought of the aftermath of psychological distress which is still brewing underneath the whirlpool of this global scourge. As mental health professionals, who had to deal with the psychological effects of the disease, this was a unique phenomenon, as disaster struck almost every individual during this global debacle, where the health system for every county had broken down in front of the overwhelming pandemic. Perhaps, this would be a good time to remind us of the tragedy suffered by the father of psychoanalysis, Sigmund Freud, who battled personal tragedy during the Spanish flu pandemic and emerged more resilient.

The last “great” pandemic human civilization faced together was that of the Spanish flu, (1918–1920), what is interesting to note is that even the founder of modern psychoanalysis, and perhaps one of the greatest thinkers of the 20^th century: Sigmund Freud, was also not left untouched by the eponymous disease. His favorite daughter, his “Sunday Child”, Sophie Halberstadt-Freud died on January 25, 1920 of this virus infection and that her death, as well as that of her youngest son, Heinerle, three years later incited a deep sense of despair in Freud, which was realized only later in his thinking.[1]

A day after Sophie Freud dies, he writes to his friend Pastor Osker Pfister,

.“That afternoon we received the news that our sweet Sophie in Hamburg had been snatched away by influenzal pneumonia, snatched away in the midst of glowing health, from a full and active life as a competent mother and loving wife, all in four or five days, as though she had never existed. Although we had been worried about her for a couple of days, we had nevertheless been hopeful; it is so difficult to judge from a distance. And this distance must remain distance, we were not able to travel at once, as we had intended, after the first alarming news; there was no train, not even for an emergency. The undisguised brutality of our time is weighing heavily upon us. Tomorrow she is being cremated, our poor Sunday Child!”[2]

Apart from the exemplary penmanship and sense of diction, he was already known for, the deep sense of devastation and helplessness of a bereaved father also shines through the lines.

This death was long thought to have been his inspiration toward the formulation of the now famous “Thanatos”/Death Drive, one of the two cornerstones of psychoanalytic understanding of man, the other being “Eros”/Life Drive.

That this death had cast a shadow on this remarkable man’s life and thoughts was exemplified by his letters to two long-term associates, Sándor Ferenzi and Ludwig Binswanger.

He wrote of this “irreparable narcissistic wound” in a letter to Sándor Ferenczi[3] on February 4. On April 11, 1929, he consoled Ludwig Binswanger, who had suffered from a similar loss: “We know that the acute sorrow we feel after such a loss will run its course, but also that we will remain inconsolable, and will never find a substitute. No matter what may come to take its place, even should it fill that place completely, it remains something else. And that is how it should be. It is the only way of perpetuating a love that we do not want to abandon.”[2]

Despite this immense suffering and the daily hardship, he was going through during the war years (1914-18): “The restrictions are bad for us, the uncertainties are great, clinical practice is of course low” and “it is bitterly cold in the room^”,[2] he writes to B. Abraham on December 2, 1918 and then again on February 9, 1919, this remarkable man never lost his understanding of the human unconscious, some of his groundbreaking works (The Ego and the Id; 1923, The Future of an Illusion; 1927, Moses and Monotheism; 1939) appeared well after this period. His works became not only psychological classics, but formed the very fabric of the human psyche, and proposed a way of understanding the human mind, which was in a sense trailblazing.

Even after the devastation of World War, and the Spanish influenza, the direct ripples of which affected him, Sigmund Freud produced the architecture on which later analysts and clinicians have been exploring and building upon to date.

On May 5, 2023, more than three years since COVID-19 was designated as a pandemic, the World Health Organization declared an end to the global Public Health Emergency (PHE) for COVID-19.[4] The PHE may have ended, but COVID-19 remains a public health threat, SARS-CoV-2, the virus that causes COVID-19, is highly mutative[5] In the past, new variants such as Delta and Omicron triggered increases in the number of cases and hospitalizations, even among populations with high levels of vaccine induced or natural immunity.[6] Hence, the threat still looms large. Almost a century after the Spanish Flu, when we are just coming out of the grip of a similar catastrophe, we should keep reminding ourselves of the words of Sigmund Freud, which reach us today like an echo from a distance:

“Si vis vitam, para mortem - If you want to endure life, prepare yourself for death.”[7]

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