To Weininger universal
symbolism
seemed a means for
broadening knowledge of life: symbolism was an expansion of
existing life, a prolongation.
broadening knowledge of life: symbolism was an expansion of
existing life, a prolongation.
Weininger - 1946 - Mind and Death of a Genius
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org/access_use#pd-google
? 164 Genius and Insanity
problem of distinguishing the normal from the abnormal
mind. It can be solved only on the basis of understanding that
abnormal mental phenomena are exaggerations or deviations,
varying from normal phenomena only in degree, not in type.
Normal and abnormal conduct have the same roots.
A person's social conduct depends upon his ability to adapt.
In healthy individuals ideas are accompanied by adequate
feelings, while in persons suffering from schizophrenia the as-
sociation between ideas and feelings is wanting. For the in-
dividual, social adaptation is, however, in reality a sublimated
sexual transference. After two persons have been together for
a certain period of time a positive or negative mental rapport
is established and expresses itself in feelings of sympathy or
antipathy. On such feelings of sympathy are friendship and
harmony based.
We may say that a man's social behavior corresponds to the
way he reacts to sexual stimuli. Therefore, one may find a man
easy-going or difficult of access, graceful or awkward in conduct,
showing more or less capacity to adjust, that is, capability for
transference. As to Weininger's personality make-up, he did
not, with his affects, belong to the gay type, because he did not
live in immediate contact with his environment. This failure
to establish contact arose from a failure of transference; he did
not have the proper capacity for transferring his libido to the
external world. He disliked and refrained from displaying any
feeling at all. His emotions and passions did not break through.
Since all transference can be traced back to sexuality, it is logi-
cal to conclude that Weininger's mental illness had destroyed
his capacity for sexual transference in particular and social
transference in general.
When a person turns away from the surrounding world, he
necessarily feels that he is alone, pitted against a world that is
hostile to him. Weininger acquired such a hostile attitude to
his environment. He developed feelings of isolation from the
external world--originally an autoerotic isolation--and, shut-
ting himself off from actuality, withdrew gradually into his
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? Genius and Insanity 165
own shell. The result was that he retreated into an idealized
world, where his real life took place. In this withdrawal he was
in good company, for many schizoid artists and schizophrenic
poets (such as Holderlin and Strindberg) are compelled to
take refuge in a world where their tender imaginations meet
no resistance.
Throughout his life Weininger demonstrated suppression
of his emotions by his cool manner and his lack of affects. The
disaster for him was that the distance between his ego and
actuality became greater and greater until at last there were no
connections left--a condition that indicates a schizophrenic
process.
A partial withdrawal from reality is a manifestation seen in
normal and in neurotic persons, but in them the withdrawal
is quite different from that of the schizophrenic. It is a turn
toward fantasy (introversion), and the person withdrawing
builds figures of fantasy from objects of childhood. The schizo-
phrenic individual, instead, abandons this interest in objects.
As Abraham 12 has pointed out, the difference between a
neurosis and a psychosis depends upon whether or not any ob-
ject representations are preserved in the process of withdrawal.
Weininger's apparent contact with his environment would
seem contrary to this theory of schizophrenia. Yet what oc-
curred in Otto is not uncommonly found in schizophrenics;
he tried to maintain contact with the surrounding world but
was able to do so only momentarily because the restitutive
powers in him were short-lived.
In Weininger the feeling of omnipotence was instigated by
his primary narcissism, which was clearly related to his pro-
nounced self-esteem. The result was that he developed a pe-
culiar brand of speculative metaphysics. For him all objects
gradually became concrete ego-qualities. His ego was pene-
trated by the world, and the world was penetrated by his ego.
This aspect of his mental development was expressed with
startling clarity in his constructive symbolism.
12 Karl Abraham, Selected Papers on Psychoanalysis (London, 1942), p. 77.
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? 166
Genius and Insanity
In the chapter "Metaphysics" in Vber die letzten Dinge he
wrote: "The thought came to me (in the spring of 1902) that
there must be a relationship between the deep ocean and crime,
and I believe I can maintain the same idea today. The depths
of the ocean have no share in light, the greatest symbol of the
highest life; any being that chooses to live theie must be crimi-
nal, afraid of light. An octopus, when it is symbolic, can be
seen only as a symbol of evil" (U. L. D. , p. 115). And he con-
tinues, "During the following summer and fall I developed
from this idea the plan--and I could fulfill only a very small
part of the tasks it involved--of writing an animal psychology
that would have quite a different meaning from any study that
had previously been done. "
It was thus in,the spring of 1902 that he first took up the
project of a general theory of symbolism, but he did not begin
to set it down on paper until August or September, 1903, when
he was staying in Italy. About the basic idea he wrote: "It is
founded on the theory of man as microcosmos. . . . Since
there is a relationship between the human being and every-
thing in the world, everything must be present in him in one
way or another. To the human the world system must be iden-
tical with the human system. . . . Every form of existence in
nature corresponds to some quality in man, every possibility in
man corresponds to something in nature. All that can be sensed
in nature is interpreted through the psychological categories in
man and confirmed as symbols" (U. L. D. , pp. 113-14).
This theory seems closely connected with the formula he
wrote down in Sex and Character, which is of interest here be-
cause of its symbolic content. He wrote (p. 161), "A man is
important in proportion to the importance he places upon
everything in his life. " There is no reason to doubt that the
idea of a general system of symbolism was continually in his
mind at that time (1902-3). It appears in his discussion of the
genius in Sex and Character, in which he is thinking of him-
self. According to his statement, the ego of the genius is uni-
versal comprehension (p. 220): "The great man contains the
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? Genius and Insanity 167
whole world within himself; genius is the living microcosmos
. . . it is everything. In him and through him all psychical
phenomena cohere and are real experiences, not an elaborate
piecework brought into the mind by science. The genius sees
nature and all existence as a whole--the relations of things
flash upon him intuitively; it is not necessary for him to bridge
the gaps. "
To Weininger facts became the symbols of a psychic rela-
tionship and had no objective reality. When he wrote that "the
scientist takes phenomena as they best fit his mind, while the
great man or genius takes them as what they are" (Sex and
Character, p. 220), he was undoubtedly applying the thought
to himself. In Taschenbuch he explained (p. 32) how the
genius (himself) has confidence in his intuition: "The genius
does not need the transcendental method, because there is suf-
ficient certainty in his intuition. . . . The justification of the
psychic method is to see things in God. " And through the sum-
mer of 1903 he continued to hold to the psychic method.
In discussing the genius, Weininger expounded his own
ideas of universal symbolism. "From the idea of universality,
which is always present in the genius, he can see the importance
of the parts. Everything within himself and beyond himself he
values according to the standard of this union. For this reason
alone evaluation does not represent a function of time to him;
it always represents the great and eternal idea. Thus genius is
also deep; only genius is depth, only depth is genius. Therefore
the opinions of the genius have greater value than the opinions
of others. He creates out of his world-comprising ego, while
other people never become conscious of this creative process.
To him everything is full of meaning, all things are symbols.
Breathing is something more than a mere physical process in
the thin walls of the capillaries; the blue of the sky means to
him more than just the partial polarization of diffused and re-
flected light; snakes are not simply limbless reptiles.
"The genius sees symbols in oceans and mountains, in light
and darkness, in cypresses and palms, in pigeons and swans; he
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? i68
Genius and Insanity
not only feels, he also recognizes, something deeper in them.
The ride of the Valkyries is not caused by disturbances in the
air. All this is evident to him only because the external world
is in the deepest and closest connection with his inner world,
because the external world is to him only one little aspect of his
inner world, because the world and the ego are one in him. He
does not have to put experiences together according to rules
and laws" (Sex and Character, p. 222).
Since Weininger's turn to the theory of symbolism took
place in the spring of 1902, it is natural to see a connection
between it and the moral scruples which afflicted him at that
time. That connection is confirmed in the chapter "Meta-
physics. " "If I may make a personal remark, I may say that I
went through a long period when I regarded the chief idea in
the theoretical philosophy of Kant--that psychic phenomena
are facts of the same order as physical phenomena--as one of
his greatest and most genius-packed thoughts. I became doubt-
ful later, mostly because of my moral theoretical discussions. "
Weininger claimed to be the first to create a concept of general
symbolism. "If it should not be possible for me to complete
this construction [of the system], I may still claim for myself,
apart from the specific results, recognition as having been the
first person to have visualized it theoretically" (U. L. D. , p. 114).
What was the origin of this symbolic view? We find the
answer in his personality make-up, which was marked by
strongly repressed biological drives and a temperament which
was at once hypersensitive and cool. In him there was a definite
ratio between increased hypersensitivity and mental aloofness.
It is said that all the phenomena of light affected him strongly
and that this sensitivity grew in the latter part of his life. "In
the last period," wrote Rappaport, "it had the strongest effect
on him when he could look out on the brightly illuminated
distance through a very narrow opening" (U. L. D. , p. ix).
His way of looking at phenomena, corresponding to the state
of his mind, changed after the first of his symbolizing appeared.
The signs grew more pronounced through the summer and
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? Genius and Insanity 169
autumn, taking shape in the chapter "Animal Psychology" in
Vber die letzten Dinge, which was a collection of symbols. In
the summer of 1903 his interest in symbolization rose to a
climax. Taschenbuch indicates this clearly. His ideas at the
time were, for the most part, then cast in the form of aphorisms.
"The stars no longer laugh, they no longer have relationship to
light, but only to decency and happiness. They lack physical
properties. All animals are criminals, even the horse and the
swan (beauty without purpose, it flies no more). One should
be afraid of the swan. . . . For a river the danger is becoming
a swamp, for the ocean the danger is whirling water. One possi-
bility in the ocean corresponds to insanity. . . . The plant is a
disease; here is singularity (no walls between the cells) but no
unity, because sense organs and motion are lost (intellect,
will). The plant is characterized as immobile, that is, it re-
mains fixed in its place, has become unfree in space" (Taschen-
buch, pp. 51-55).
Examples like these are numerous. His symbolization grew
and became more and more a delirium of symbols. Finally the
process reached its final, peculiar, and monstrous phase in
Taschenbuch and the "Letzte Aphorismen," in which all
material things appear as symbols. Rappaport says: "Every
single animal, every plant, every mineral, mountain and valley,
water and fire, light and heat, became symbols. Light became
his symbol of decency, fire a symbol of destruction, the well a
symbol of birth; the river is the Apollonian principle, the ocean
the Dionysian. Dogs, swine, and snakes are symbols of crime"
(U. L. D. , p. viii).
This sort of symbolism is characteristic of archaic thinking.
The symbol, unconsciously adopted, is a manifestation of re-
gression to an earlier stage of thinking. When, for instance,
Otto Weininger says that snakes are symbols of crime, he is
using the snake as a symbol to hide an unconscious idea which
he could not bear. Since the snake is a phallic symbol, it is
easy to see why it symbolized crime for Weininger. The male
sexual organ is the means for expressing the sexual drive--an
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? lyo Genius and Insanity
idea rejected by him--and it was therefore for him a symbol
of crime.
To Weininger universal symbolism seemed a means for
broadening knowledge of life: symbolism was an expansion of
existing life, a prolongation. In the symbol he felt that he
traced some of his own experiences, and thus symbolizing be-
came a projection. He often upheld the statement that was the
starting point of his symbolism, "The world is my idea. "
"This," he said, "is the ideal of all philosophy, and it reveals in
the clearest fashion how things are reflected through the ego of
the philosopher" (U. L. D. , p. 61). Symbolism widened his
horizons, enlarged and broadened his world, while unifying and
explaining it. His constructive symbolism resulted in the fusion
of all phenomena, which were thus bound together in a uni-
versal idea, and it finally took on a religious tinge, as did all
Weininger's conceptions. He believed that his ego and the
world were interpenetrated, and he thus ended with a specula-
tive, metaphysical, religious philosophy; all his statements took
on the tone of religious dedication.
His universal symbolism expressed the restitutional symp-
toms of schizophrenia. He seems to have felt compelled to
bring order into the world, which he considered varied and
rich. His meanings were partly hidden, partly clear, but they
always had something of a symbolic or prophetic tone. He was
with his symbols trying to rebuild what he had lost through
his morbid narcissism--seeking a salvation that would take
shape in an almost passive manner as his reunion with the uni-
verse, a union of oral character. 13
The strong religious coloring and religious connotations in
his symbols are of interest. Since religion is largely a matter
of tradition carried over from the father, Otto's words and tone
may express his conflict with his father. It should not be for-
gotten that one point of departure for Otto's psychosis was to
18 Otto Fenichel, The Psychoanalytic Theory of Neurosis (New York, 1945),
p. 425-
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? Genius and Insanity 171
be found in his defense against his homosexual feelings toward
his father.
The development of universal symbolism to the point of
delirium may be seen as a beginning of the disintegration of
Weininger's personality. Just as his basic personality had two
poles, good and evil, so his symbolism was also dual. Man con-
sists of two parts--"everything," which results from the cos-
mos, and "nothing," which originates in chaos. At the highest
point in his scale stood "everything," goodness, beauty, and
truth; at the lowest point stood crime and insanity. These two,
crime and insanity, were of the greatest interest to Weininger.
He considered as tending toward insanity all disturbances of
the logical equilibrium, including persecution mania, hypo-
chondria, melancholia, megalomania, and all forms of obses-
sional ideas and phobias. He said: "When a man is in danger
of becoming insane, all that is logical becomes senseless to him.
Instinctive certainty of judgment deserts him. If he is not to
lose his grip altogether, he must seek the help of the highest, the
most fundamental, principles of the intellect. That is why such
people take particular interest in the problems of logic and the
science of cognition" (U. L. D. , p. x).
Such thoughts arose from introspection; they give us some
idea of what Weininger thought of himself. He said emphati-
cally that "all that is evil in man is the result of a lack of con-
sciousness. " Since consciousness was to Weininger synonymous
with decency, introspection became moral, because it sought
out the criminal forces in man and was the means of freeing
himself from criminal urges. This thesis he expounded in
sentences like the following: "Every true, eternal problem is an
equally true, eternal guilt; every answer is an atonement, every
recognition an improvement" (U. L. D. , p. xi; cf. Taschenbuch,
p. 66).
He used introspection to search out the "evil forces" that he
believed to be within him. These were related to his dual
symbolism. Thus he wrote: "The animal whose meaning has
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? 172 Genius and Insanity
become most clear to me is the dog. I do not know whether the
dog is in the least a symbol of crime, but the dog is a symbol of
the criminal" (U. L. D. , p. 115). The implications in this state-
ment lead us back to his thwarted suicide plan in November,
1902. Then he had talked of a barking dog presaging death;
then he had called himself a born criminal. The dog as the
symbol of the criminal is linked with those ideas. For it never
ceased to be true that, as Rappaport said, "Weininger firmly
believed that he was a criminal" (U. L. D. , p. xiv).
His conviction that there was evil in himself can be under-
stood only in the light of his personality make-up, in which
constructive and destructive impulses collided and strong
moral ambitions warred with his sex cravings. Continued
mental dissatisfaction bred self-criticism, which grew stronger
and stronger until it became at times a delirium, a morbid
hatred of himself.
A certain delire dinterpretation arose, and morbid conclu-
sions, based on supposed observations and pure speculation,
led to more and more mistaken ideas. In Sex and Character we
can see how the basic idea that man is everything and woman
nothing gradually developed into a series of absurd conclusions.
It is hard to avoid the impression that, despite all the excellent
observations in it, the book as a whole is a tissue of erroneous
ideas. These errors, beyond correction, were constructed into
what may be called a system of delusions.
The value of an idea, of course, is not dependent on whether
it came from a normal or from a morbid mind. Disease may
often promote great thoughts. The decisive criterion is the re-
lationship between disease and thought, that is, the question
whether the thoughts are closely related to the man's mental
make-up or the disease is incidental to them. In diagnosing
Weininger's state of mind it is not necessary to prove that all
his theoretical statements were morbid. Ths aim must be to
examine the morbid elements. Even if a thought, when consid-
ered by itself, seems sound, it may yet be an expression of a
disease. The fact is that Weininger's intellectual activity was
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? Genius and Insanity 173
thoroughly tied up with his psychic make-up and with his dis-
eased state of mind.
When we look into Vber die letzten Dinge we can find ex-
pressions that seem to be clearly those of a schizophrenic per-
son. He says, "AH words which are to some extent a part of life
contain the letter I," and proceeds to give a long list of words,
mostly in German and Latin, including those for live, love, lust,
voluptuous, laughter, light, lily, flute, lenient, slender, lamb, etc.
This passage was written in the summer of 1903 and was typical
of his mental condition at the time. The repetition of words
here has an obsessional quality, which is found in patients suf-
fering from any of various abnormal mental conditions.
The quotation has, however, an aspect of more importance
than the alliteration or the compulsory motives. Through the
letter I Weininger has constructed a whole system of words
which are related more or less clearly to voluptuousness. His use
of alliteration shows him keeping in place associations which
move in a definite scheme. It seems that in him a sexualizing
of the external world was taking place. The conclusion is
strengthened when we remember that Weininger wrote this
passage at a time when he thought his sexual feelings were ex-
tinguished. To substitute for them he created a highly sexual-
ized system; thus, a pathological compensation took place. He
sexualized the universe, transferring his libido not only to ani-
mate, but also to inanimate objects. With everything in his
environment he had a personal relationship that originated in
his sexuality. And sexualizing in this manner is typical of a
schizophrenic person.
In this connection some of his words concerning individuality
are of interest. "One needs," he wrote, "the pose, the audience, J
the theater. That is why the criminal is homosexual. " Again he
is referring to himself. Does it not seem likely that he is by a
compensatory process trying to maintain contact with his sur-
roundings, trying to keep the connection which he is gradually
losing? Here, too, it is not too far-fetched to consider the process
of his thought as sort of sexualizing.
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? 174 Genius and Insanity
Freud has shown that in certain types of schizophrenia, the
sufferer manifests a verbal behavior that is an attempt to re-
cover the real world. So it is here with Weininger. 14 The at-
tempt failed, for he recaptured nothing but word representa-
tions, shadows. When a normal person thinks of an object he
thinks of all its qualities, but the schizophrenic centers his
feelings only upon the word or the term, not upon the object
itself. This was the case with Weininger.
We may better understand his state of mind if we look at the
aphorisms that appeared in the first edition of Vber die letzten
Dinge and were in the later editions to a great extent suppressed
by Rappaport. The reason given for suppressing them was that
a "number of them were written in a kind of secret language,
intelligible only to those who knew it from long personal expe-
rience with Weininger. " Yet despite the statement, Rappaport,
amazingly enough, said of the aphorisms (pp. xviii-xix), "They
contain far-reaching thoughts which are not darkened by the
slightest touch of insanity, there is not one word which is not
well considered. " He contradicts himself by writing elsewhere
(p. xv), "The danger for Weininger at this time was perhaps
not so much crime as--in the broader sense of the word--
insanity. "
His correspondence and notes during the summer showed
the growing split between his emotional and intellectual life
and actuality. As Biro wrote, "His notes were the shadow of
approaching disintegration. " Weininger's self-accusation grew
stronger, his sexual abstinence continued, and life became
sacred to him. Some lines from a letter to Gerber (August 23,
1903) are characteristic: "Two flowers of a papyrus branch, a
little piece of bark from the same tree--you must ascribe it to
circumstance that the captain who rowed my boat cut the plant
against my specifically expressed will and without my knowl-
edge. "
One aspect of Weininger's sexual life remains to be discussed
--the sadistic and masochistic inclinations which, because of
"Sigmund Freud, Collected Papers, IV (London, 1925), 129, 133.
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? Genius and Insanity 175
his own make-up and because of social resistance, he had to
restrain. His sadistic impulses were not approved by his per-
sonality (or, more accurately, were not determined by his su-
perego) but, coming indirectly to the fore through a projection
mechanism, appeared in tabu-like behavior and strong ideas of
atonement. They were related to his anal-sadistic traits. His
statement that the crater at Etna "reminds me of the behind
of a monkey" showed his tendency to anal eroticism, which is
one of the physiological causes of ambivalence and bisexuality.
When we look for sadistic inclinations in Weininger, we
must bear in mind that some traces of sadism are to be found in
his family. What Otto himself thought of sadism is expressed
in the chapter "Aphoristisches" in Vber die letzten Dinge (p.
69): "A man who commits suicide is practically always a sadist,
because he wants to get out of a situation and can act; a maso-
chist must for all eternity beg permission to take his own life.
. . . The sadist goes to others (against their will, their constant
disposition) to help them obtain (immediate) happiness or
pain; he is grateful or revengeful. " These words, written months
before he took his own life, were certainly to be applied to
himself.
Weininger saw the connection between the sexual urge and
sadism. In Sex and Character he wrote (pp. 333-34): "Accord-
ing to Novalis, it has often been said that all sexual urge is re-
lated to cruelty. There is a deep reason for this association. All
that is born of woman must die. Reproduction, birth, and death
are indissolubly connected; by a premature death the sexual
urge expresses itself as a desire to reproduce oneself. Held so,
sexual intercourse is--when regarded as an act not only from
the psychological standpoint but also from the moral and nat-
ural philosophical point of view--related to murder. . . . The
real psychology of the beloved woman will always be disre-
garded. The moment a man loves a woman he cannot recognize
her as she is. In love the man does not understand the woman,
and understanding should be the only decent relationship be-
tween human beings. A human can never love another whom
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? 1y6 Genius and Insanity
he understands through and through, since one could not then
help seeing the imperfections which are sure to be found in any
human being, and love deals only with the perfect. Love for a
woman is, therefore, possible only when the real qualities, de-
sires, and interests of the woman are described in so far as they
are in opposition to the localization of superior qualities in her
person. The attempt to find oneself in a woman instead of
looking for herself necessarily involves disregarding her real
personality. This effort is always cruel to the woman, and in it
lies the reason for all the egotism in love as well as the cause of
jealousy, which regards the woman as private property without
attention to her individual mental life. We have thus drawn
the parallel between the cruelty of eroticism and the cruelty of
sexuality. Love is murder. The sexual drive is a negation of the
physical and psychic woman, always erotic to the last. "
Cruelty--or, as it should be more properly called, sadism--
thus here acquired its true meaning for Weininger. He early
became familiar with the problem of sadism-masochism. He
was demonstrating the presence of sadistic tendencies in him-
self when he sought to prove that Ibsen was a sadist and a
masochist. He wrote in his essay on Ibsen (U. L. D. , p. 22):
"While Ibsen at the peak of his production was a thorough
masochist (as proved by The Master Builder), he was not
without certain sadistic traits in his youth. There are traces of
sadism in several of the poems he long withheld from publica-
tion and in Gildet pa Solhaug. . . . In the second act of Peer
Gynt (the stolen bride) and in the first act (the threat against
Solveig) there are positive sadistic qualities; it is possible that
Ibsen here wanted to discipline himself. "
These remarks on self-discipline apply better to himself than
to Ibsen.
? 164 Genius and Insanity
problem of distinguishing the normal from the abnormal
mind. It can be solved only on the basis of understanding that
abnormal mental phenomena are exaggerations or deviations,
varying from normal phenomena only in degree, not in type.
Normal and abnormal conduct have the same roots.
A person's social conduct depends upon his ability to adapt.
In healthy individuals ideas are accompanied by adequate
feelings, while in persons suffering from schizophrenia the as-
sociation between ideas and feelings is wanting. For the in-
dividual, social adaptation is, however, in reality a sublimated
sexual transference. After two persons have been together for
a certain period of time a positive or negative mental rapport
is established and expresses itself in feelings of sympathy or
antipathy. On such feelings of sympathy are friendship and
harmony based.
We may say that a man's social behavior corresponds to the
way he reacts to sexual stimuli. Therefore, one may find a man
easy-going or difficult of access, graceful or awkward in conduct,
showing more or less capacity to adjust, that is, capability for
transference. As to Weininger's personality make-up, he did
not, with his affects, belong to the gay type, because he did not
live in immediate contact with his environment. This failure
to establish contact arose from a failure of transference; he did
not have the proper capacity for transferring his libido to the
external world. He disliked and refrained from displaying any
feeling at all. His emotions and passions did not break through.
Since all transference can be traced back to sexuality, it is logi-
cal to conclude that Weininger's mental illness had destroyed
his capacity for sexual transference in particular and social
transference in general.
When a person turns away from the surrounding world, he
necessarily feels that he is alone, pitted against a world that is
hostile to him. Weininger acquired such a hostile attitude to
his environment. He developed feelings of isolation from the
external world--originally an autoerotic isolation--and, shut-
ting himself off from actuality, withdrew gradually into his
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? Genius and Insanity 165
own shell. The result was that he retreated into an idealized
world, where his real life took place. In this withdrawal he was
in good company, for many schizoid artists and schizophrenic
poets (such as Holderlin and Strindberg) are compelled to
take refuge in a world where their tender imaginations meet
no resistance.
Throughout his life Weininger demonstrated suppression
of his emotions by his cool manner and his lack of affects. The
disaster for him was that the distance between his ego and
actuality became greater and greater until at last there were no
connections left--a condition that indicates a schizophrenic
process.
A partial withdrawal from reality is a manifestation seen in
normal and in neurotic persons, but in them the withdrawal
is quite different from that of the schizophrenic. It is a turn
toward fantasy (introversion), and the person withdrawing
builds figures of fantasy from objects of childhood. The schizo-
phrenic individual, instead, abandons this interest in objects.
As Abraham 12 has pointed out, the difference between a
neurosis and a psychosis depends upon whether or not any ob-
ject representations are preserved in the process of withdrawal.
Weininger's apparent contact with his environment would
seem contrary to this theory of schizophrenia. Yet what oc-
curred in Otto is not uncommonly found in schizophrenics;
he tried to maintain contact with the surrounding world but
was able to do so only momentarily because the restitutive
powers in him were short-lived.
In Weininger the feeling of omnipotence was instigated by
his primary narcissism, which was clearly related to his pro-
nounced self-esteem. The result was that he developed a pe-
culiar brand of speculative metaphysics. For him all objects
gradually became concrete ego-qualities. His ego was pene-
trated by the world, and the world was penetrated by his ego.
This aspect of his mental development was expressed with
startling clarity in his constructive symbolism.
12 Karl Abraham, Selected Papers on Psychoanalysis (London, 1942), p. 77.
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? 166
Genius and Insanity
In the chapter "Metaphysics" in Vber die letzten Dinge he
wrote: "The thought came to me (in the spring of 1902) that
there must be a relationship between the deep ocean and crime,
and I believe I can maintain the same idea today. The depths
of the ocean have no share in light, the greatest symbol of the
highest life; any being that chooses to live theie must be crimi-
nal, afraid of light. An octopus, when it is symbolic, can be
seen only as a symbol of evil" (U. L. D. , p. 115). And he con-
tinues, "During the following summer and fall I developed
from this idea the plan--and I could fulfill only a very small
part of the tasks it involved--of writing an animal psychology
that would have quite a different meaning from any study that
had previously been done. "
It was thus in,the spring of 1902 that he first took up the
project of a general theory of symbolism, but he did not begin
to set it down on paper until August or September, 1903, when
he was staying in Italy. About the basic idea he wrote: "It is
founded on the theory of man as microcosmos. . . . Since
there is a relationship between the human being and every-
thing in the world, everything must be present in him in one
way or another. To the human the world system must be iden-
tical with the human system. . . . Every form of existence in
nature corresponds to some quality in man, every possibility in
man corresponds to something in nature. All that can be sensed
in nature is interpreted through the psychological categories in
man and confirmed as symbols" (U. L. D. , pp. 113-14).
This theory seems closely connected with the formula he
wrote down in Sex and Character, which is of interest here be-
cause of its symbolic content. He wrote (p. 161), "A man is
important in proportion to the importance he places upon
everything in his life. " There is no reason to doubt that the
idea of a general system of symbolism was continually in his
mind at that time (1902-3). It appears in his discussion of the
genius in Sex and Character, in which he is thinking of him-
self. According to his statement, the ego of the genius is uni-
versal comprehension (p. 220): "The great man contains the
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? Genius and Insanity 167
whole world within himself; genius is the living microcosmos
. . . it is everything. In him and through him all psychical
phenomena cohere and are real experiences, not an elaborate
piecework brought into the mind by science. The genius sees
nature and all existence as a whole--the relations of things
flash upon him intuitively; it is not necessary for him to bridge
the gaps. "
To Weininger facts became the symbols of a psychic rela-
tionship and had no objective reality. When he wrote that "the
scientist takes phenomena as they best fit his mind, while the
great man or genius takes them as what they are" (Sex and
Character, p. 220), he was undoubtedly applying the thought
to himself. In Taschenbuch he explained (p. 32) how the
genius (himself) has confidence in his intuition: "The genius
does not need the transcendental method, because there is suf-
ficient certainty in his intuition. . . . The justification of the
psychic method is to see things in God. " And through the sum-
mer of 1903 he continued to hold to the psychic method.
In discussing the genius, Weininger expounded his own
ideas of universal symbolism. "From the idea of universality,
which is always present in the genius, he can see the importance
of the parts. Everything within himself and beyond himself he
values according to the standard of this union. For this reason
alone evaluation does not represent a function of time to him;
it always represents the great and eternal idea. Thus genius is
also deep; only genius is depth, only depth is genius. Therefore
the opinions of the genius have greater value than the opinions
of others. He creates out of his world-comprising ego, while
other people never become conscious of this creative process.
To him everything is full of meaning, all things are symbols.
Breathing is something more than a mere physical process in
the thin walls of the capillaries; the blue of the sky means to
him more than just the partial polarization of diffused and re-
flected light; snakes are not simply limbless reptiles.
"The genius sees symbols in oceans and mountains, in light
and darkness, in cypresses and palms, in pigeons and swans; he
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? i68
Genius and Insanity
not only feels, he also recognizes, something deeper in them.
The ride of the Valkyries is not caused by disturbances in the
air. All this is evident to him only because the external world
is in the deepest and closest connection with his inner world,
because the external world is to him only one little aspect of his
inner world, because the world and the ego are one in him. He
does not have to put experiences together according to rules
and laws" (Sex and Character, p. 222).
Since Weininger's turn to the theory of symbolism took
place in the spring of 1902, it is natural to see a connection
between it and the moral scruples which afflicted him at that
time. That connection is confirmed in the chapter "Meta-
physics. " "If I may make a personal remark, I may say that I
went through a long period when I regarded the chief idea in
the theoretical philosophy of Kant--that psychic phenomena
are facts of the same order as physical phenomena--as one of
his greatest and most genius-packed thoughts. I became doubt-
ful later, mostly because of my moral theoretical discussions. "
Weininger claimed to be the first to create a concept of general
symbolism. "If it should not be possible for me to complete
this construction [of the system], I may still claim for myself,
apart from the specific results, recognition as having been the
first person to have visualized it theoretically" (U. L. D. , p. 114).
What was the origin of this symbolic view? We find the
answer in his personality make-up, which was marked by
strongly repressed biological drives and a temperament which
was at once hypersensitive and cool. In him there was a definite
ratio between increased hypersensitivity and mental aloofness.
It is said that all the phenomena of light affected him strongly
and that this sensitivity grew in the latter part of his life. "In
the last period," wrote Rappaport, "it had the strongest effect
on him when he could look out on the brightly illuminated
distance through a very narrow opening" (U. L. D. , p. ix).
His way of looking at phenomena, corresponding to the state
of his mind, changed after the first of his symbolizing appeared.
The signs grew more pronounced through the summer and
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? Genius and Insanity 169
autumn, taking shape in the chapter "Animal Psychology" in
Vber die letzten Dinge, which was a collection of symbols. In
the summer of 1903 his interest in symbolization rose to a
climax. Taschenbuch indicates this clearly. His ideas at the
time were, for the most part, then cast in the form of aphorisms.
"The stars no longer laugh, they no longer have relationship to
light, but only to decency and happiness. They lack physical
properties. All animals are criminals, even the horse and the
swan (beauty without purpose, it flies no more). One should
be afraid of the swan. . . . For a river the danger is becoming
a swamp, for the ocean the danger is whirling water. One possi-
bility in the ocean corresponds to insanity. . . . The plant is a
disease; here is singularity (no walls between the cells) but no
unity, because sense organs and motion are lost (intellect,
will). The plant is characterized as immobile, that is, it re-
mains fixed in its place, has become unfree in space" (Taschen-
buch, pp. 51-55).
Examples like these are numerous. His symbolization grew
and became more and more a delirium of symbols. Finally the
process reached its final, peculiar, and monstrous phase in
Taschenbuch and the "Letzte Aphorismen," in which all
material things appear as symbols. Rappaport says: "Every
single animal, every plant, every mineral, mountain and valley,
water and fire, light and heat, became symbols. Light became
his symbol of decency, fire a symbol of destruction, the well a
symbol of birth; the river is the Apollonian principle, the ocean
the Dionysian. Dogs, swine, and snakes are symbols of crime"
(U. L. D. , p. viii).
This sort of symbolism is characteristic of archaic thinking.
The symbol, unconsciously adopted, is a manifestation of re-
gression to an earlier stage of thinking. When, for instance,
Otto Weininger says that snakes are symbols of crime, he is
using the snake as a symbol to hide an unconscious idea which
he could not bear. Since the snake is a phallic symbol, it is
easy to see why it symbolized crime for Weininger. The male
sexual organ is the means for expressing the sexual drive--an
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? lyo Genius and Insanity
idea rejected by him--and it was therefore for him a symbol
of crime.
To Weininger universal symbolism seemed a means for
broadening knowledge of life: symbolism was an expansion of
existing life, a prolongation. In the symbol he felt that he
traced some of his own experiences, and thus symbolizing be-
came a projection. He often upheld the statement that was the
starting point of his symbolism, "The world is my idea. "
"This," he said, "is the ideal of all philosophy, and it reveals in
the clearest fashion how things are reflected through the ego of
the philosopher" (U. L. D. , p. 61). Symbolism widened his
horizons, enlarged and broadened his world, while unifying and
explaining it. His constructive symbolism resulted in the fusion
of all phenomena, which were thus bound together in a uni-
versal idea, and it finally took on a religious tinge, as did all
Weininger's conceptions. He believed that his ego and the
world were interpenetrated, and he thus ended with a specula-
tive, metaphysical, religious philosophy; all his statements took
on the tone of religious dedication.
His universal symbolism expressed the restitutional symp-
toms of schizophrenia. He seems to have felt compelled to
bring order into the world, which he considered varied and
rich. His meanings were partly hidden, partly clear, but they
always had something of a symbolic or prophetic tone. He was
with his symbols trying to rebuild what he had lost through
his morbid narcissism--seeking a salvation that would take
shape in an almost passive manner as his reunion with the uni-
verse, a union of oral character. 13
The strong religious coloring and religious connotations in
his symbols are of interest. Since religion is largely a matter
of tradition carried over from the father, Otto's words and tone
may express his conflict with his father. It should not be for-
gotten that one point of departure for Otto's psychosis was to
18 Otto Fenichel, The Psychoanalytic Theory of Neurosis (New York, 1945),
p. 425-
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? Genius and Insanity 171
be found in his defense against his homosexual feelings toward
his father.
The development of universal symbolism to the point of
delirium may be seen as a beginning of the disintegration of
Weininger's personality. Just as his basic personality had two
poles, good and evil, so his symbolism was also dual. Man con-
sists of two parts--"everything," which results from the cos-
mos, and "nothing," which originates in chaos. At the highest
point in his scale stood "everything," goodness, beauty, and
truth; at the lowest point stood crime and insanity. These two,
crime and insanity, were of the greatest interest to Weininger.
He considered as tending toward insanity all disturbances of
the logical equilibrium, including persecution mania, hypo-
chondria, melancholia, megalomania, and all forms of obses-
sional ideas and phobias. He said: "When a man is in danger
of becoming insane, all that is logical becomes senseless to him.
Instinctive certainty of judgment deserts him. If he is not to
lose his grip altogether, he must seek the help of the highest, the
most fundamental, principles of the intellect. That is why such
people take particular interest in the problems of logic and the
science of cognition" (U. L. D. , p. x).
Such thoughts arose from introspection; they give us some
idea of what Weininger thought of himself. He said emphati-
cally that "all that is evil in man is the result of a lack of con-
sciousness. " Since consciousness was to Weininger synonymous
with decency, introspection became moral, because it sought
out the criminal forces in man and was the means of freeing
himself from criminal urges. This thesis he expounded in
sentences like the following: "Every true, eternal problem is an
equally true, eternal guilt; every answer is an atonement, every
recognition an improvement" (U. L. D. , p. xi; cf. Taschenbuch,
p. 66).
He used introspection to search out the "evil forces" that he
believed to be within him. These were related to his dual
symbolism. Thus he wrote: "The animal whose meaning has
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? 172 Genius and Insanity
become most clear to me is the dog. I do not know whether the
dog is in the least a symbol of crime, but the dog is a symbol of
the criminal" (U. L. D. , p. 115). The implications in this state-
ment lead us back to his thwarted suicide plan in November,
1902. Then he had talked of a barking dog presaging death;
then he had called himself a born criminal. The dog as the
symbol of the criminal is linked with those ideas. For it never
ceased to be true that, as Rappaport said, "Weininger firmly
believed that he was a criminal" (U. L. D. , p. xiv).
His conviction that there was evil in himself can be under-
stood only in the light of his personality make-up, in which
constructive and destructive impulses collided and strong
moral ambitions warred with his sex cravings. Continued
mental dissatisfaction bred self-criticism, which grew stronger
and stronger until it became at times a delirium, a morbid
hatred of himself.
A certain delire dinterpretation arose, and morbid conclu-
sions, based on supposed observations and pure speculation,
led to more and more mistaken ideas. In Sex and Character we
can see how the basic idea that man is everything and woman
nothing gradually developed into a series of absurd conclusions.
It is hard to avoid the impression that, despite all the excellent
observations in it, the book as a whole is a tissue of erroneous
ideas. These errors, beyond correction, were constructed into
what may be called a system of delusions.
The value of an idea, of course, is not dependent on whether
it came from a normal or from a morbid mind. Disease may
often promote great thoughts. The decisive criterion is the re-
lationship between disease and thought, that is, the question
whether the thoughts are closely related to the man's mental
make-up or the disease is incidental to them. In diagnosing
Weininger's state of mind it is not necessary to prove that all
his theoretical statements were morbid. Ths aim must be to
examine the morbid elements. Even if a thought, when consid-
ered by itself, seems sound, it may yet be an expression of a
disease. The fact is that Weininger's intellectual activity was
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? Genius and Insanity 173
thoroughly tied up with his psychic make-up and with his dis-
eased state of mind.
When we look into Vber die letzten Dinge we can find ex-
pressions that seem to be clearly those of a schizophrenic per-
son. He says, "AH words which are to some extent a part of life
contain the letter I," and proceeds to give a long list of words,
mostly in German and Latin, including those for live, love, lust,
voluptuous, laughter, light, lily, flute, lenient, slender, lamb, etc.
This passage was written in the summer of 1903 and was typical
of his mental condition at the time. The repetition of words
here has an obsessional quality, which is found in patients suf-
fering from any of various abnormal mental conditions.
The quotation has, however, an aspect of more importance
than the alliteration or the compulsory motives. Through the
letter I Weininger has constructed a whole system of words
which are related more or less clearly to voluptuousness. His use
of alliteration shows him keeping in place associations which
move in a definite scheme. It seems that in him a sexualizing
of the external world was taking place. The conclusion is
strengthened when we remember that Weininger wrote this
passage at a time when he thought his sexual feelings were ex-
tinguished. To substitute for them he created a highly sexual-
ized system; thus, a pathological compensation took place. He
sexualized the universe, transferring his libido not only to ani-
mate, but also to inanimate objects. With everything in his
environment he had a personal relationship that originated in
his sexuality. And sexualizing in this manner is typical of a
schizophrenic person.
In this connection some of his words concerning individuality
are of interest. "One needs," he wrote, "the pose, the audience, J
the theater. That is why the criminal is homosexual. " Again he
is referring to himself. Does it not seem likely that he is by a
compensatory process trying to maintain contact with his sur-
roundings, trying to keep the connection which he is gradually
losing? Here, too, it is not too far-fetched to consider the process
of his thought as sort of sexualizing.
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? 174 Genius and Insanity
Freud has shown that in certain types of schizophrenia, the
sufferer manifests a verbal behavior that is an attempt to re-
cover the real world. So it is here with Weininger. 14 The at-
tempt failed, for he recaptured nothing but word representa-
tions, shadows. When a normal person thinks of an object he
thinks of all its qualities, but the schizophrenic centers his
feelings only upon the word or the term, not upon the object
itself. This was the case with Weininger.
We may better understand his state of mind if we look at the
aphorisms that appeared in the first edition of Vber die letzten
Dinge and were in the later editions to a great extent suppressed
by Rappaport. The reason given for suppressing them was that
a "number of them were written in a kind of secret language,
intelligible only to those who knew it from long personal expe-
rience with Weininger. " Yet despite the statement, Rappaport,
amazingly enough, said of the aphorisms (pp. xviii-xix), "They
contain far-reaching thoughts which are not darkened by the
slightest touch of insanity, there is not one word which is not
well considered. " He contradicts himself by writing elsewhere
(p. xv), "The danger for Weininger at this time was perhaps
not so much crime as--in the broader sense of the word--
insanity. "
His correspondence and notes during the summer showed
the growing split between his emotional and intellectual life
and actuality. As Biro wrote, "His notes were the shadow of
approaching disintegration. " Weininger's self-accusation grew
stronger, his sexual abstinence continued, and life became
sacred to him. Some lines from a letter to Gerber (August 23,
1903) are characteristic: "Two flowers of a papyrus branch, a
little piece of bark from the same tree--you must ascribe it to
circumstance that the captain who rowed my boat cut the plant
against my specifically expressed will and without my knowl-
edge. "
One aspect of Weininger's sexual life remains to be discussed
--the sadistic and masochistic inclinations which, because of
"Sigmund Freud, Collected Papers, IV (London, 1925), 129, 133.
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? Genius and Insanity 175
his own make-up and because of social resistance, he had to
restrain. His sadistic impulses were not approved by his per-
sonality (or, more accurately, were not determined by his su-
perego) but, coming indirectly to the fore through a projection
mechanism, appeared in tabu-like behavior and strong ideas of
atonement. They were related to his anal-sadistic traits. His
statement that the crater at Etna "reminds me of the behind
of a monkey" showed his tendency to anal eroticism, which is
one of the physiological causes of ambivalence and bisexuality.
When we look for sadistic inclinations in Weininger, we
must bear in mind that some traces of sadism are to be found in
his family. What Otto himself thought of sadism is expressed
in the chapter "Aphoristisches" in Vber die letzten Dinge (p.
69): "A man who commits suicide is practically always a sadist,
because he wants to get out of a situation and can act; a maso-
chist must for all eternity beg permission to take his own life.
. . . The sadist goes to others (against their will, their constant
disposition) to help them obtain (immediate) happiness or
pain; he is grateful or revengeful. " These words, written months
before he took his own life, were certainly to be applied to
himself.
Weininger saw the connection between the sexual urge and
sadism. In Sex and Character he wrote (pp. 333-34): "Accord-
ing to Novalis, it has often been said that all sexual urge is re-
lated to cruelty. There is a deep reason for this association. All
that is born of woman must die. Reproduction, birth, and death
are indissolubly connected; by a premature death the sexual
urge expresses itself as a desire to reproduce oneself. Held so,
sexual intercourse is--when regarded as an act not only from
the psychological standpoint but also from the moral and nat-
ural philosophical point of view--related to murder. . . . The
real psychology of the beloved woman will always be disre-
garded. The moment a man loves a woman he cannot recognize
her as she is. In love the man does not understand the woman,
and understanding should be the only decent relationship be-
tween human beings. A human can never love another whom
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? 1y6 Genius and Insanity
he understands through and through, since one could not then
help seeing the imperfections which are sure to be found in any
human being, and love deals only with the perfect. Love for a
woman is, therefore, possible only when the real qualities, de-
sires, and interests of the woman are described in so far as they
are in opposition to the localization of superior qualities in her
person. The attempt to find oneself in a woman instead of
looking for herself necessarily involves disregarding her real
personality. This effort is always cruel to the woman, and in it
lies the reason for all the egotism in love as well as the cause of
jealousy, which regards the woman as private property without
attention to her individual mental life. We have thus drawn
the parallel between the cruelty of eroticism and the cruelty of
sexuality. Love is murder. The sexual drive is a negation of the
physical and psychic woman, always erotic to the last. "
Cruelty--or, as it should be more properly called, sadism--
thus here acquired its true meaning for Weininger. He early
became familiar with the problem of sadism-masochism. He
was demonstrating the presence of sadistic tendencies in him-
self when he sought to prove that Ibsen was a sadist and a
masochist. He wrote in his essay on Ibsen (U. L. D. , p. 22):
"While Ibsen at the peak of his production was a thorough
masochist (as proved by The Master Builder), he was not
without certain sadistic traits in his youth. There are traces of
sadism in several of the poems he long withheld from publica-
tion and in Gildet pa Solhaug. . . . In the second act of Peer
Gynt (the stolen bride) and in the first act (the threat against
Solveig) there are positive sadistic qualities; it is possible that
Ibsen here wanted to discipline himself. "
These remarks on self-discipline apply better to himself than
to Ibsen.
