Abbreviations
The following abbreviations are used in the text to refer to cer-
tain frequently quoted books.
The following abbreviations are used in the text to refer to cer-
tain frequently quoted books.
Weininger - 1946 - Mind and Death of a Genius
The desire to live struggled in him with the
desire to die. As soon as he returned to Vienna he wished to
leave once more. His attempts to see Gerber, his protracted
parting from his father, his final letters, were all expressions
of his hope to be saved from death. At the same time he did
not want to live. Conflicting tendencies whirled in his mind;
every thought called forth its antithesis, bringing continuous
contradiction. This ambivalence reached the point where he
wished at the same time both to live and to die. He had been
unsuccessful in his attempt to repress his hostility. Hatred of
his own sexual desires had led to hatred of himself and to feel-
ings of hostility. His attempts at repression were only partially
17 Carl Dallago, Otto Weininger und sein Werk (Innsbruck, 1912), p. 7.
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? 188
Genius and Insanity
successful, and hostile feelings popped to the surface whenever
he felt that he had neutralized them. His final diatribes
against the Jews showed his violent inclinations to revenge
and his overwhelming sense of guilt. He was stricken with de-
spair, which gradually spread within him until it amounted to
actual despair of his life.
This sense of guilt was connected with his feelings of
sadism. In him, as in any individual with an insatiable sadism
directed against all, the sadism was repressed in his uncon-
sciousness. As in other cases, so in Weininger too this severe
repression brought pain and depression. Weininger also had
the suppressed desire to be a criminal, the most wicked crim-
inal in the world, with greater guilt than any other. This urge,
with the repression of his sadistic tendencies, strengthened his
self-reproach, anxieties, and despondency.
His mystic desires for purity and atonement, for a life of
eternal truth, contended with the counter motives. He be-
lieved that his was a future more glorious than that of ordi-
nary men. Symbolically he entitled his last manuscript Vber
die letzten Dinge. In his distorted imaginings he lived at the
same time in a world of resignation and suffering, enduring
strong temptations of evil, and in a world of realism and great-
ness. Not long before he killed himself he told Swoboda that
there were three possibilities before him: suicide, the scaffold,
or a goal more wonderful than any that a human had fought
for before. And in one of the passages included in the first
edition of Vber die letzten Dinge (p. xvii) but deleted in
later editions he said, "If I am victorious, it will be the great-
est victory any man has ever won. "
Suicide was for him the path of evil. "There is," he said in
Taschenbuch (p. 176), "an ethical reason for a man's need of
a weapon (even if it be his hand) for taking his own life. He
did not bestow life on himself, and only God can take it away
from him; but the life of the suicide belongs to the devil. "
He had also said that his book meant a sentence of death
upon either the author or the book itself. The factors precipitat-
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? Genius and Insanity 189
ing his suicide seem to have been his loss of self-esteem and
prestige because of the failure of his book. It is quite true that
his self-esteem rose when his book was attacked, but it is prob-
able that deep within himself his self-confidence must have
been finally sapped. Since, generally speaking, such self-
confidence serves as a shield against anxieties, Weininger found
himself without defense. This condition led farther. Weininger
probably expected punishment to come swiftly. It seems safe
to guess that when he was considering killing himself he had
first intended to kill someone else. His intended victim would
be one of the persons closest to himself in childhood--his
father or his mother. If he had, or thought he had, some con-
genital physical defect, his hatred toward them might well have
given rise to definite plans for murder. Yet in the end he di-
rected his sadism against himself. He had to rid himself of his
strong consciousness of the cruelty of his superego. This aim
he accomplished by self-punishment, self-destruction.
Connected with these surging emotions there must have
been, too, an idea or illusion that he might obtain gratification
through his suicide. Weininger simultaneously rebelled against
and submitted to, his superego. When he spoke of "the scaf-
fold" to Swoboda, he must have meant becoming a criminal.
When he spoke of a "wonderful goal," he was undeniably
cherishing the fantasy of becoming a hero, a god. Within him,
beneath a smooth and controlled surface, heavily charged emo-
tions rose to a storm. He, who was in his own imagination
both hero and criminal, lost the battle.
When we review Weininger's mental condition, we find an
amazing range of psychological phenomena within its envelop-
ing structure: hysterical reactions, deep contradictions, sadis-
tic and masochistic impulses, guilt feelings, sexual cravings,
hallucinations, introversion, and periods of split personality.
He was always on the borderline, and his ability to adapt to
reality steadily decreased.
Yet though the clinical picture varies, there is little doubt
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? 1go Genius and Insanity
that his disease belonged to the schizophrenic group. His at-
titude was autistic, or rather deiristic (thinking away from the
subject). He used images and symbols that showed psychotic
thinking and the regression of his instinctual drives to an early
narcissistic episode in his life. His narcissism apparently was
steadily nourished from his id (instinctual impulses), and the
development suggests that his regression went back to the time
when his ego was first in the process of formation, probably
to the oral phase, which precedes the oral-sadistic period. His
autistic thoughts became incorrigible and for him took on the
value of reality. The factual world lost its actuality and became
for him only words, words to which he clung. He lived in a
world of which he was the center.
His illness, however, deviated from ordinary cases of schizo-
phrenia. He did not reach the stage of stupor, because his
mental functions seemed to have been practically intact. Even
at the peak of his psychosis his introspection and his analytical
ability were as brilliant as ever. For him new experiences, hav-
ing depth of meaning, took the form of reality, though often
in grotesque shape. In the ordinary schizophrenic person a
new and fundamental experience is quite personal in mean-
ing; in the secondary stage it may evolve into creative expres-
sion but originally it has for him no existence in reality. Thus,
in the ordinary schizophrenic the mental functions seem more
or less destroyed, in Weininger they were superficially pre-
served.
To find cases like that of Weininger we must turn to those
men of creative minds who have been afflicted with schizo-
phrenia. In this group some notable figures are Vincent Van
Gogh, August Strindberg, and Friedrich Holderlin. 18 The
question then arises as to the relationship between Weininger
and his work. Since it has been assumed that in the cases of
Van Gogh, Strindberg, and Holderlin, their artistic work was
18 Karl Jaspers, Strindberg und Van Gogh; Versuch einer pathologischen Ana-
lyse unter vergleichender Heranziehung von Swedenborg und Holderlin (Berlin,
1926).
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? Genius and Insanity 191
furthered by their psychosis,19 we must ask, Shall we compare
Weininger and his work to a tree and its fruit? The usually
complex relationship between creator and creation is most
easily seen when it seems immediately apparent that the au-
thor is the sole originator of the work, as in the case of Wei-
ninger. Though the latter part of his book was created while his
psychosis was developing, the book was not necessarily a result
of the mental state. It may, however, be said that morbid or
abnormal motives seem to have acted as a kind of motor for a
talent which was in him always new and fresh. His concept
of his work changed as a result of the psychosis of that No-
vember night of 1902. He created a new style, different from
that of the relatively healthy Weininger of 1900 and 1901.
This change in him may be compared to the process of schizo-
phrenic change in Swedenborg. 20
In the second half of Sex and Character there are hints that
the book was written in a schizophrenic atmosphere. The rea-
son why schizophrenic traits are not so apparent in the first
part of the book is that those chapters mostly contain his
factual material and knowledge. His great store of information
was coordinated with amazing talent, and the schizophrenic
outbursts are cleverly disguised.
The writing of the whole book was to some extent an aes-
thetic disguise. The face of reality was too harsh for Weininger
to gaze upon directly; to see it he had to use the spectacles of
aesthetics. Only thus could he permit his unconscious to formu-
late conscious ideas. Only thus could he obtain the satisfaction
otherwise denied to him. Through symbols and images his
repressed desires were able to pass the censor of his unconscious.
If we may label as "inspiration" the unconscious element
in a work of art while considering the formative part as pos-
sibly being conscious, then Weininger's "inspiration" lay in
the process of aesthetic disguise. Through it the conscious ideas
emerged out of the unconscious and rose to artistic expression.
1? Hans Gruhle, Psychopathie und Insinn (Berlin, 1932, Neue Deutsche Klinik,
Band IX).
20 Jaspers, Strindberg and Von Gogh, p. 87.
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? 192
Genius and Insanity
It may well be that this same sort of "inspiration" is to be seen
generally in creative artists. 21
Like Van Gogh, Strindberg, and Holderlin, Weininger lived
under the shadow of schizophrenia. His experiences were col-
ored by it, and ideas emerged which might not have revealed
themselves so obviously but for his diseased condition. There
seems no explanation for the change in his style except schizo-
phrenia.
It must be remembered that the schizophrenic process does
not always lead to the typical stupor. Other forms are not
marked by this destruction of the brain, forms in which the
subject goes through various phases and stages in development
of the personality.
A mental process and a development of the personality dif-
fer in nature. A process is marked by definite deviation from
previous living, and change away from the original structure of
the personality is thereafter progressive. A development of the
personality, on the other hand, means only mental growth and
maturation while relationships with the environment and ex-
periences remain normal.
Was Weininger's case one of personality development or
abnormal process? If we decide that his whole development,
ending with his suicide, was a progress to maturity, even if it
reached overmaturity, we must conclude that he suffered from
a neurosis. This diagnosis is, however, unacceptable, even
though in the maturing process crises may occur that are re-
markably similar to certain forms of schizophrenia. Nor can
the term ambulatory schizophrenia be applied to the state of
mind of such a highly gifted man.
Apart from the reaction formation based on his narcissism,
there appeared certain changes in his personality which did
not lead his personality back to its previous shape. The
changes to a certain extent formed a continuation of his orig-
inal structure, with certain elements growing, other elements
21 Else Pappenheim and Ernst Kris, "The Function of Drawings and the
Meaning of the 'Creative Spell' in a Schizophrenic Artist," The Psychoanalytic
Quarterly, XV (1946), 6.
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? Genius and Insanity 193
being destroyed. Finally, his behavior on the November night
of 1902 argues against any theory of development of his per-
sonality. His case must be considered as mental process.
Yet this explanation is not fully satisfactory. His personality
make-up and his philosophy on the one hand, his philosophy
and his psychosis on the other, were unbreakably connected
during the course of his development. Consequently we must
assume that in him personal development and mental process
were fused in a manner similar to that shown in Strindberg.
This view is, however, possible only when we discard the
standard definitions of development and process and substi-
tute for them terms describing psychological phenomena. Ac-
tually there are many phenomena which cannot be classified
as one or the other but partake of the nature of both.
It must be remembered that schizophrenia is varied in form
and may have a different meaning according to the situation.
Schizophrenia may mean a broad way of experiencing events,
it may mean a world of an amazing totality which we cannot
at present define. It may be considered as a form of maladjust-
ment characterized by some specific sort of change in think-
ing, feeling, or behavior. Thus, schizophrenia is not a disease
or a group of diseases. It seems to be a disorganization of the
personality which takes place in accord with the stress and
strain of life, finally ending in a failure to adapt to actuality.
These things being true, schizophrenia may be a great real-
ity which today we cannot measure objectively. In this sense,
Weininger's life can be seen as both a personality develop-
ment and a mental process of schizophrenic nature.
To say that his mind was diseased does not detract from
the merit of his work, since science, art, and poetry may be
judged only according to their truth and beauty. As has been
said earlier, disease may further valuable thought. 22
12 Another gifted man, Auguste Comte, spent a year in a hospital for the insane
two years before the publication of Cours de philosophie positive, on which he
had worked fourteen years. Beethoven's father was a drunkard, and he himself,
even before he acquired his ear disease, became seclusive, frequently changed
his residence without cause, and had a tendency to a washing mania.
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? 194 Genius and Insanity
Weininger's mental conflicts were the source of his fame.
They were the means of a constant inner revival as psychol-
ogist and writer, as philosopher and man, and were also the
cause of great pain. "The true liberation of the mind," he
wrote in Sex and Character (p. 94), "cannot be secured by a
great, violent army; every single individual must alone fight
for it Against whom? Against the enemies in his own soul. "
That was the foe Weininger was fighting in his struggle, and
he came out the loser. His life is one more page in the history
of human thought and mental disease.
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? Bibliography, Appendix, and Index
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?
Abbreviations
The following abbreviations are used in the text to refer to cer-
tain frequently quoted books.
Der Fall Ferdinand Probst, Der Fall Otto Weininger:
Eine psychiatrische Studie, in Grenzfragen des
Nerven- und Seelenlebens. Wiesbaden, 1904.
Ewald Oskar Ewald (pseudonym of Oskar Fried-
la? nder), Die Erweckung. Berlin, 1922.
Lucka Emil Lucka, Otto Weininger: Der Mensch und
sein Werk. Vienna, 1905.
Swoboda Hermann Swoboda, Otto Weiningers Tod. Vi-
enna, 1911.
Taschenbuch Otto Weininger, Taschenbuch und Briefe an
einem Freund, edited by Arthur Gerber. Leipzig
and Vienna, 1919.
U. L. D. Otto Weininger, U? ber die letzten Dinge, edited
with a biographical foreword, by M. Rappaport.
Vienna, 1903. 9th ed. , Vienna, 1930.
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? Bibliographic
Note
Since Sex and Character was published, many books and articles
have been written for and against this work and its author. In Au-
gust, 1903, one Dr. Schneider wrote a sharp article against Otto
Weininger in Beilage zur allgemeinen Zeitung, No. 292. In the
same year Sex and Character was attacked by P. J. Mbbius in
Schmidts Jahrbucher der gesammten Medizin, pp. 210-15. This
article the author followed up in November of the same year with a
biting criticism in a pamphlet entitled, like the review, Geschlecht
und Unbescheidenheit (Sex and Immodesty). In 1904 Ferdinand
Probst, then assistant doctor at the Insane Hospital in Munich,
wrote a study entitled Der Fall Otto Weininger (The Case of Otto
Weininger), published in Grenzfragen des Nerven- und Seelen-
lebens (Wiesbaden, 1904). He attacked Weininger and attempted
to make a psychiatric analysis of man and book. In Die Wage,
No. 45, November, 1904, an article by Wilhelm Stekel, "Der Fall
Otto Weininger," appeared in defense of Weininger, while an
article by Margarethe Gellert (pseudonym of Grete Meisl-Hess)
criticized Weininger's views.
In Norway, Hulda Garborg wrote a book which was published
anonymously in 1904; in it she discussed Otto Weininger's views on
women and used some of the main points of Sex and Character as
the frame for an account of her own life. The little book sold 15,000
copies in four months. Shortly afterwards, also in 1904, an article
appeared in Samtiden, published in Oslo; in this Dr. Andr. M. Han-
sen stated that "there can be no doubt that this [the book] is a
contribution of an importance far beyond the sensational--a far-
reaching thought for today. "
In the same year Dr. Henrik A. Th. Dedichen, in an essay pub-
lished in Tidskrift for Nordisk Retsmedicin og Psykiatri, IV (1904),
gave a good picture of Weininger. He finally reached the conclusion
that Weininger was insane, without stating in any detail the sort of
psychosis he was suffering.
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? 198 Bibliography
In 1904 Professor Ragnar Vogt wrote a review of Sex and Char-
acter for Tidskrift for den Norske Legeforening, in which he praised
the style and plan in the book but at the same time stated that
"Weininger will hardly find any supporters for his inconvenient
conclusions. "
In the same periodical, in 1905, Dr. Paul Winge had an article
discussing the basic problems in Sex and Character. To complete
the list of Norwegian literature on Weininger, mention must be
made of an article by Ronald Fangen in Samtiden in 1916, later re-
printed in his book, Streiftog i Diktning og Tenkning; and an article
by Professor S. Laache in the same periodical in 1920. Professor
Laache discusses Otto Weininger in a general consideration of
genius as a biological problem. He concluded that any final analysis
of the mental life of Otto Weininger must be problematic, and he
quoted Falret: "What is normal? What is insanity? Those are ques-
tions I dare not answer. "
In the Danish periodical, Det nye Arhundre, Erik A. Faber had
an article which contained the judgment that there was hardly
any prospect of Otto Weininger's becoming "the creator of a new,
universal religion, as he seems to have expected in his exaggerated
self-esteem. "
Several of Weininger's friends and acquaintances also wrote con-
cerning him. Emil Lucka, at the request of Leopold Weininger,
wrote a book that was offered as an unbiased appraisal of Weinin-
ger's life and work in answer to Probst's criticism. This was Otto
Weininger: Der Mensch und sein Werk, published at Vienna in
1905. He also wrote articles on Weininger and his life which ap-
peared in Die Fackel (October 17, 1903), in Neue Bahnen fur
Kunst und offentliches Leben (December, 1903, and January,
1904) and in Der Tag (January 3, 1923). Another friend, Her-
mann Swoboda, wrote an answer to the claims of Wilhelm Fliess
in Die gemeinniitzige Forschung und der eigenniitzige Forscher,
published in Vienna in 1906, and also a book on Weininger's death,
Otto Weiningers Tod, published in the same city five years later.
Oskar Friedlander, who wrote under the pseudonym Oskar Ewald,
included material on Weininger in Die Erweckung, published in
Berlin in 1922. There is, of course, also material in the introduction
by M. Rappaport to Vber die letzten Dinge (Vienna, 1907) and
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? Bibliography 199
the account given by Arthur Gerber in his edition of Taschenbuch
(Vienna, 1919).
One of the essays in John Landquist's Filosofiske Essay er (Stock-
holm, 1906) was devoted to Weininger. Carl Dallago wrote a val-
uable study, Otto Weininger und sein Werk, which was published
at Innsbruck in 1912, and Weininger was one of the figures studied
in Andre Spire's Quelques juifs (Paris, 1913).
Several works were later written by men too young to be con-
temporaries of Weininger. These included an impressive study by
Georg Klaren, Otto Weininger, der Mensch, sein Werk und sein
Leben (Vienna, 1924), a study of Weininger-'s ethical views by
Paul Biro, Die Sittlichkeitsmetaphysik Otto Weiningers (Vienna,
1927), doctoral dissertations by Leopold Thaler and Johannes Zun-
zer, and various other works. Weininger is also mentioned in count-
less discussions of the sex problem. Some of these studies and other
writings with pertinent information have been cited in the foot-
notes.
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? Appendix
LETTER I
Vienna, March 6, 1938
Dear Dr. Abrahamsen:
In reply to your letter of the third of this month, we hereby in-
form you that Otto Weininger is registered in our Record of Births
for the year 1880. He was born April 3,1880. His father's name was
Leopold, his mother's Adelheid, nee Frey. His Hebrew name was
Schlomoh. The date of his circumcision, as well as the name of
the surgeon who performed it and his Jewish descent, can be shown.
Whether Otto attended any Jewish school or as a boy showed
any interest in the Jewish religion we are not able to say on the
basis of our registries.
In any case, he left the Jewish Congregation on May 28, 1902.
We hope that these details have served you satisfactorily.
Very faithfully yours,
Matrtkelamt der Israelitischen
kultusgemeinde in wien
Der Matrikenfuhrer
LETTER II
Vienna, March 5, 1938
Dear Doctor:
My reply to your friendly letter must, I regret to say, disappoint
you, because I am not able to say more about Weininger than I
have said in my little book about him. . . .
You say that in Scandinavia almost nothing is known about
Weininger. However, shortly after the German edition of Sex and
Character, a Danish edition appeared, of which you perhaps know.
I believe that Weininger was not personally known to Professor
Sigmund Freud, but he was interested in his theory of hysteria and
also perhaps learned much from him.
Professor Avenarius--you mean Richard Avenarius, the author of
Kritik der reinen Erfahrung--was not known to Otto Weininger;
at least he was not in the beginning influenced by Avenarius. In the
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? 202
Appendix
latter part of his work he disregarded positivistic philosophy and
turned to Plato and the philosophy of the German idealists, par-
ticularly Schilling.
These fews things will probably not help you very much, but I
have answered your questions as well as I could.
Very faithfully yours,
Emil Lucka
LETTER III
Budapest, March 9, 1938
Dear Doctor:
I am glad to know you through your letters. In the last years my
brother lived I was with him, and I can answer your questions. I am
glad that I thereby can be of service to you.
Otto did not personally know Professor Freud and to the best of
my knowledge never dealt with his works.
Otto's personal experiences with women did not influence him.
Please find an enclosed study by one of my young friends, Doctor
Paul Biro, who at twenty dealt very much with philosophy. . . .
Perhaps you can find something in this book which is unknown
to you and from which you may perhaps benefit.
I will photograph two poems written by Otto when he was a
student, which he gave me, and I will send them to you in a few
days.
You have not annoyed me at all. If you should come to visit here
sometime, I would like to see you. . . .
With kindest regards,
Rosa Boschan Weininger
LETTER IV
3-14-38
Vienna IX--19 Berggasse
Dear Doctor:
My relations to Otto Weininger were very complicated. It is not
possible to describe them in a short letter. A long thesis would be
necessary. I was the first one to read through his manuscript--and
the first to give an unfavorable opinion of it. His principal idea he
also got through me indirectly, and in a quite inaccurate way.
Yours sincerely,
Sigmund Freud
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? Appendix 203
LETTER V
Vienna
Grinzinger Allee
March 26, 1938
Dear Doctor:
I was a close friend of Otto Weininger, and his personality is still
of continuing importance to me. . . .
The power of his influence was in the human impulse which ac-
companied him and which expressed itself in all his shortcomings
and all his immaturity (he was just twenty! ). He was concerned
with humanity--all humanity, not just a part of it. He conceived
the idea that there is a living unity of the individual and the uni-
verse; his basic attitude was beyond sex. As a measure of pure hu-
manity, he acknowledged the superiority, the triumph of the spirit-
ual character over sex, a mastering of every drive--or, as it should be
called, what in human beings is more than man or woman. . . .
The dimensions of his thinking and creation were in accord with
his personality. His life was practically a restless process of contin-
uation which gave to every one of his statements a touch of religious
initiation, of clear apocalyptic growth.
Weininger's works are known to you. His book Taschenbuch
appeared at the end of the war. This book (with some letters) was
for a long time in Dr. Arthur Gerber's possession, and he gave me
this book in 1919. The book was deciphered by our mutual efforts.
It mainly contained notes of personal and weltanschavlicher nature,
which throw light chiefly upon his last days.
Allow me to mention that I have already published a book, Die
Erweckung (Berlin, Ernst Hofmann), in which I wrote a quite
extensive chapter about my experiences with Otto Weininger. I
regret to say that I do not have a copy. I would, of course, have sent
it to you if I had.
I greet you with sincerity, and I would be happy to meet you in
person.
Sincerely yours,
OSKAR EWALD
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? 204 Appendix
LETTER VI
Budapest
August 27, 1938
Dear Dr. Abrahamsen:
I beg your forgiveness for not having answered sooner--
(1) The next time I will send you a good photograph of Otto.
(2) 1 have a photograph which has never before been published.
desire to die. As soon as he returned to Vienna he wished to
leave once more. His attempts to see Gerber, his protracted
parting from his father, his final letters, were all expressions
of his hope to be saved from death. At the same time he did
not want to live. Conflicting tendencies whirled in his mind;
every thought called forth its antithesis, bringing continuous
contradiction. This ambivalence reached the point where he
wished at the same time both to live and to die. He had been
unsuccessful in his attempt to repress his hostility. Hatred of
his own sexual desires had led to hatred of himself and to feel-
ings of hostility. His attempts at repression were only partially
17 Carl Dallago, Otto Weininger und sein Werk (Innsbruck, 1912), p. 7.
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? 188
Genius and Insanity
successful, and hostile feelings popped to the surface whenever
he felt that he had neutralized them. His final diatribes
against the Jews showed his violent inclinations to revenge
and his overwhelming sense of guilt. He was stricken with de-
spair, which gradually spread within him until it amounted to
actual despair of his life.
This sense of guilt was connected with his feelings of
sadism. In him, as in any individual with an insatiable sadism
directed against all, the sadism was repressed in his uncon-
sciousness. As in other cases, so in Weininger too this severe
repression brought pain and depression. Weininger also had
the suppressed desire to be a criminal, the most wicked crim-
inal in the world, with greater guilt than any other. This urge,
with the repression of his sadistic tendencies, strengthened his
self-reproach, anxieties, and despondency.
His mystic desires for purity and atonement, for a life of
eternal truth, contended with the counter motives. He be-
lieved that his was a future more glorious than that of ordi-
nary men. Symbolically he entitled his last manuscript Vber
die letzten Dinge. In his distorted imaginings he lived at the
same time in a world of resignation and suffering, enduring
strong temptations of evil, and in a world of realism and great-
ness. Not long before he killed himself he told Swoboda that
there were three possibilities before him: suicide, the scaffold,
or a goal more wonderful than any that a human had fought
for before. And in one of the passages included in the first
edition of Vber die letzten Dinge (p. xvii) but deleted in
later editions he said, "If I am victorious, it will be the great-
est victory any man has ever won. "
Suicide was for him the path of evil. "There is," he said in
Taschenbuch (p. 176), "an ethical reason for a man's need of
a weapon (even if it be his hand) for taking his own life. He
did not bestow life on himself, and only God can take it away
from him; but the life of the suicide belongs to the devil. "
He had also said that his book meant a sentence of death
upon either the author or the book itself. The factors precipitat-
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? Genius and Insanity 189
ing his suicide seem to have been his loss of self-esteem and
prestige because of the failure of his book. It is quite true that
his self-esteem rose when his book was attacked, but it is prob-
able that deep within himself his self-confidence must have
been finally sapped. Since, generally speaking, such self-
confidence serves as a shield against anxieties, Weininger found
himself without defense. This condition led farther. Weininger
probably expected punishment to come swiftly. It seems safe
to guess that when he was considering killing himself he had
first intended to kill someone else. His intended victim would
be one of the persons closest to himself in childhood--his
father or his mother. If he had, or thought he had, some con-
genital physical defect, his hatred toward them might well have
given rise to definite plans for murder. Yet in the end he di-
rected his sadism against himself. He had to rid himself of his
strong consciousness of the cruelty of his superego. This aim
he accomplished by self-punishment, self-destruction.
Connected with these surging emotions there must have
been, too, an idea or illusion that he might obtain gratification
through his suicide. Weininger simultaneously rebelled against
and submitted to, his superego. When he spoke of "the scaf-
fold" to Swoboda, he must have meant becoming a criminal.
When he spoke of a "wonderful goal," he was undeniably
cherishing the fantasy of becoming a hero, a god. Within him,
beneath a smooth and controlled surface, heavily charged emo-
tions rose to a storm. He, who was in his own imagination
both hero and criminal, lost the battle.
When we review Weininger's mental condition, we find an
amazing range of psychological phenomena within its envelop-
ing structure: hysterical reactions, deep contradictions, sadis-
tic and masochistic impulses, guilt feelings, sexual cravings,
hallucinations, introversion, and periods of split personality.
He was always on the borderline, and his ability to adapt to
reality steadily decreased.
Yet though the clinical picture varies, there is little doubt
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? 1go Genius and Insanity
that his disease belonged to the schizophrenic group. His at-
titude was autistic, or rather deiristic (thinking away from the
subject). He used images and symbols that showed psychotic
thinking and the regression of his instinctual drives to an early
narcissistic episode in his life. His narcissism apparently was
steadily nourished from his id (instinctual impulses), and the
development suggests that his regression went back to the time
when his ego was first in the process of formation, probably
to the oral phase, which precedes the oral-sadistic period. His
autistic thoughts became incorrigible and for him took on the
value of reality. The factual world lost its actuality and became
for him only words, words to which he clung. He lived in a
world of which he was the center.
His illness, however, deviated from ordinary cases of schizo-
phrenia. He did not reach the stage of stupor, because his
mental functions seemed to have been practically intact. Even
at the peak of his psychosis his introspection and his analytical
ability were as brilliant as ever. For him new experiences, hav-
ing depth of meaning, took the form of reality, though often
in grotesque shape. In the ordinary schizophrenic person a
new and fundamental experience is quite personal in mean-
ing; in the secondary stage it may evolve into creative expres-
sion but originally it has for him no existence in reality. Thus,
in the ordinary schizophrenic the mental functions seem more
or less destroyed, in Weininger they were superficially pre-
served.
To find cases like that of Weininger we must turn to those
men of creative minds who have been afflicted with schizo-
phrenia. In this group some notable figures are Vincent Van
Gogh, August Strindberg, and Friedrich Holderlin. 18 The
question then arises as to the relationship between Weininger
and his work. Since it has been assumed that in the cases of
Van Gogh, Strindberg, and Holderlin, their artistic work was
18 Karl Jaspers, Strindberg und Van Gogh; Versuch einer pathologischen Ana-
lyse unter vergleichender Heranziehung von Swedenborg und Holderlin (Berlin,
1926).
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? Genius and Insanity 191
furthered by their psychosis,19 we must ask, Shall we compare
Weininger and his work to a tree and its fruit? The usually
complex relationship between creator and creation is most
easily seen when it seems immediately apparent that the au-
thor is the sole originator of the work, as in the case of Wei-
ninger. Though the latter part of his book was created while his
psychosis was developing, the book was not necessarily a result
of the mental state. It may, however, be said that morbid or
abnormal motives seem to have acted as a kind of motor for a
talent which was in him always new and fresh. His concept
of his work changed as a result of the psychosis of that No-
vember night of 1902. He created a new style, different from
that of the relatively healthy Weininger of 1900 and 1901.
This change in him may be compared to the process of schizo-
phrenic change in Swedenborg. 20
In the second half of Sex and Character there are hints that
the book was written in a schizophrenic atmosphere. The rea-
son why schizophrenic traits are not so apparent in the first
part of the book is that those chapters mostly contain his
factual material and knowledge. His great store of information
was coordinated with amazing talent, and the schizophrenic
outbursts are cleverly disguised.
The writing of the whole book was to some extent an aes-
thetic disguise. The face of reality was too harsh for Weininger
to gaze upon directly; to see it he had to use the spectacles of
aesthetics. Only thus could he permit his unconscious to formu-
late conscious ideas. Only thus could he obtain the satisfaction
otherwise denied to him. Through symbols and images his
repressed desires were able to pass the censor of his unconscious.
If we may label as "inspiration" the unconscious element
in a work of art while considering the formative part as pos-
sibly being conscious, then Weininger's "inspiration" lay in
the process of aesthetic disguise. Through it the conscious ideas
emerged out of the unconscious and rose to artistic expression.
1? Hans Gruhle, Psychopathie und Insinn (Berlin, 1932, Neue Deutsche Klinik,
Band IX).
20 Jaspers, Strindberg and Von Gogh, p. 87.
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? 192
Genius and Insanity
It may well be that this same sort of "inspiration" is to be seen
generally in creative artists. 21
Like Van Gogh, Strindberg, and Holderlin, Weininger lived
under the shadow of schizophrenia. His experiences were col-
ored by it, and ideas emerged which might not have revealed
themselves so obviously but for his diseased condition. There
seems no explanation for the change in his style except schizo-
phrenia.
It must be remembered that the schizophrenic process does
not always lead to the typical stupor. Other forms are not
marked by this destruction of the brain, forms in which the
subject goes through various phases and stages in development
of the personality.
A mental process and a development of the personality dif-
fer in nature. A process is marked by definite deviation from
previous living, and change away from the original structure of
the personality is thereafter progressive. A development of the
personality, on the other hand, means only mental growth and
maturation while relationships with the environment and ex-
periences remain normal.
Was Weininger's case one of personality development or
abnormal process? If we decide that his whole development,
ending with his suicide, was a progress to maturity, even if it
reached overmaturity, we must conclude that he suffered from
a neurosis. This diagnosis is, however, unacceptable, even
though in the maturing process crises may occur that are re-
markably similar to certain forms of schizophrenia. Nor can
the term ambulatory schizophrenia be applied to the state of
mind of such a highly gifted man.
Apart from the reaction formation based on his narcissism,
there appeared certain changes in his personality which did
not lead his personality back to its previous shape. The
changes to a certain extent formed a continuation of his orig-
inal structure, with certain elements growing, other elements
21 Else Pappenheim and Ernst Kris, "The Function of Drawings and the
Meaning of the 'Creative Spell' in a Schizophrenic Artist," The Psychoanalytic
Quarterly, XV (1946), 6.
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? Genius and Insanity 193
being destroyed. Finally, his behavior on the November night
of 1902 argues against any theory of development of his per-
sonality. His case must be considered as mental process.
Yet this explanation is not fully satisfactory. His personality
make-up and his philosophy on the one hand, his philosophy
and his psychosis on the other, were unbreakably connected
during the course of his development. Consequently we must
assume that in him personal development and mental process
were fused in a manner similar to that shown in Strindberg.
This view is, however, possible only when we discard the
standard definitions of development and process and substi-
tute for them terms describing psychological phenomena. Ac-
tually there are many phenomena which cannot be classified
as one or the other but partake of the nature of both.
It must be remembered that schizophrenia is varied in form
and may have a different meaning according to the situation.
Schizophrenia may mean a broad way of experiencing events,
it may mean a world of an amazing totality which we cannot
at present define. It may be considered as a form of maladjust-
ment characterized by some specific sort of change in think-
ing, feeling, or behavior. Thus, schizophrenia is not a disease
or a group of diseases. It seems to be a disorganization of the
personality which takes place in accord with the stress and
strain of life, finally ending in a failure to adapt to actuality.
These things being true, schizophrenia may be a great real-
ity which today we cannot measure objectively. In this sense,
Weininger's life can be seen as both a personality develop-
ment and a mental process of schizophrenic nature.
To say that his mind was diseased does not detract from
the merit of his work, since science, art, and poetry may be
judged only according to their truth and beauty. As has been
said earlier, disease may further valuable thought. 22
12 Another gifted man, Auguste Comte, spent a year in a hospital for the insane
two years before the publication of Cours de philosophie positive, on which he
had worked fourteen years. Beethoven's father was a drunkard, and he himself,
even before he acquired his ear disease, became seclusive, frequently changed
his residence without cause, and had a tendency to a washing mania.
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? 194 Genius and Insanity
Weininger's mental conflicts were the source of his fame.
They were the means of a constant inner revival as psychol-
ogist and writer, as philosopher and man, and were also the
cause of great pain. "The true liberation of the mind," he
wrote in Sex and Character (p. 94), "cannot be secured by a
great, violent army; every single individual must alone fight
for it Against whom? Against the enemies in his own soul. "
That was the foe Weininger was fighting in his struggle, and
he came out the loser. His life is one more page in the history
of human thought and mental disease.
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? Bibliography, Appendix, and Index
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?
Abbreviations
The following abbreviations are used in the text to refer to cer-
tain frequently quoted books.
Der Fall Ferdinand Probst, Der Fall Otto Weininger:
Eine psychiatrische Studie, in Grenzfragen des
Nerven- und Seelenlebens. Wiesbaden, 1904.
Ewald Oskar Ewald (pseudonym of Oskar Fried-
la? nder), Die Erweckung. Berlin, 1922.
Lucka Emil Lucka, Otto Weininger: Der Mensch und
sein Werk. Vienna, 1905.
Swoboda Hermann Swoboda, Otto Weiningers Tod. Vi-
enna, 1911.
Taschenbuch Otto Weininger, Taschenbuch und Briefe an
einem Freund, edited by Arthur Gerber. Leipzig
and Vienna, 1919.
U. L. D. Otto Weininger, U? ber die letzten Dinge, edited
with a biographical foreword, by M. Rappaport.
Vienna, 1903. 9th ed. , Vienna, 1930.
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? Bibliographic
Note
Since Sex and Character was published, many books and articles
have been written for and against this work and its author. In Au-
gust, 1903, one Dr. Schneider wrote a sharp article against Otto
Weininger in Beilage zur allgemeinen Zeitung, No. 292. In the
same year Sex and Character was attacked by P. J. Mbbius in
Schmidts Jahrbucher der gesammten Medizin, pp. 210-15. This
article the author followed up in November of the same year with a
biting criticism in a pamphlet entitled, like the review, Geschlecht
und Unbescheidenheit (Sex and Immodesty). In 1904 Ferdinand
Probst, then assistant doctor at the Insane Hospital in Munich,
wrote a study entitled Der Fall Otto Weininger (The Case of Otto
Weininger), published in Grenzfragen des Nerven- und Seelen-
lebens (Wiesbaden, 1904). He attacked Weininger and attempted
to make a psychiatric analysis of man and book. In Die Wage,
No. 45, November, 1904, an article by Wilhelm Stekel, "Der Fall
Otto Weininger," appeared in defense of Weininger, while an
article by Margarethe Gellert (pseudonym of Grete Meisl-Hess)
criticized Weininger's views.
In Norway, Hulda Garborg wrote a book which was published
anonymously in 1904; in it she discussed Otto Weininger's views on
women and used some of the main points of Sex and Character as
the frame for an account of her own life. The little book sold 15,000
copies in four months. Shortly afterwards, also in 1904, an article
appeared in Samtiden, published in Oslo; in this Dr. Andr. M. Han-
sen stated that "there can be no doubt that this [the book] is a
contribution of an importance far beyond the sensational--a far-
reaching thought for today. "
In the same year Dr. Henrik A. Th. Dedichen, in an essay pub-
lished in Tidskrift for Nordisk Retsmedicin og Psykiatri, IV (1904),
gave a good picture of Weininger. He finally reached the conclusion
that Weininger was insane, without stating in any detail the sort of
psychosis he was suffering.
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? 198 Bibliography
In 1904 Professor Ragnar Vogt wrote a review of Sex and Char-
acter for Tidskrift for den Norske Legeforening, in which he praised
the style and plan in the book but at the same time stated that
"Weininger will hardly find any supporters for his inconvenient
conclusions. "
In the same periodical, in 1905, Dr. Paul Winge had an article
discussing the basic problems in Sex and Character. To complete
the list of Norwegian literature on Weininger, mention must be
made of an article by Ronald Fangen in Samtiden in 1916, later re-
printed in his book, Streiftog i Diktning og Tenkning; and an article
by Professor S. Laache in the same periodical in 1920. Professor
Laache discusses Otto Weininger in a general consideration of
genius as a biological problem. He concluded that any final analysis
of the mental life of Otto Weininger must be problematic, and he
quoted Falret: "What is normal? What is insanity? Those are ques-
tions I dare not answer. "
In the Danish periodical, Det nye Arhundre, Erik A. Faber had
an article which contained the judgment that there was hardly
any prospect of Otto Weininger's becoming "the creator of a new,
universal religion, as he seems to have expected in his exaggerated
self-esteem. "
Several of Weininger's friends and acquaintances also wrote con-
cerning him. Emil Lucka, at the request of Leopold Weininger,
wrote a book that was offered as an unbiased appraisal of Weinin-
ger's life and work in answer to Probst's criticism. This was Otto
Weininger: Der Mensch und sein Werk, published at Vienna in
1905. He also wrote articles on Weininger and his life which ap-
peared in Die Fackel (October 17, 1903), in Neue Bahnen fur
Kunst und offentliches Leben (December, 1903, and January,
1904) and in Der Tag (January 3, 1923). Another friend, Her-
mann Swoboda, wrote an answer to the claims of Wilhelm Fliess
in Die gemeinniitzige Forschung und der eigenniitzige Forscher,
published in Vienna in 1906, and also a book on Weininger's death,
Otto Weiningers Tod, published in the same city five years later.
Oskar Friedlander, who wrote under the pseudonym Oskar Ewald,
included material on Weininger in Die Erweckung, published in
Berlin in 1922. There is, of course, also material in the introduction
by M. Rappaport to Vber die letzten Dinge (Vienna, 1907) and
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? Bibliography 199
the account given by Arthur Gerber in his edition of Taschenbuch
(Vienna, 1919).
One of the essays in John Landquist's Filosofiske Essay er (Stock-
holm, 1906) was devoted to Weininger. Carl Dallago wrote a val-
uable study, Otto Weininger und sein Werk, which was published
at Innsbruck in 1912, and Weininger was one of the figures studied
in Andre Spire's Quelques juifs (Paris, 1913).
Several works were later written by men too young to be con-
temporaries of Weininger. These included an impressive study by
Georg Klaren, Otto Weininger, der Mensch, sein Werk und sein
Leben (Vienna, 1924), a study of Weininger-'s ethical views by
Paul Biro, Die Sittlichkeitsmetaphysik Otto Weiningers (Vienna,
1927), doctoral dissertations by Leopold Thaler and Johannes Zun-
zer, and various other works. Weininger is also mentioned in count-
less discussions of the sex problem. Some of these studies and other
writings with pertinent information have been cited in the foot-
notes.
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? Appendix
LETTER I
Vienna, March 6, 1938
Dear Dr. Abrahamsen:
In reply to your letter of the third of this month, we hereby in-
form you that Otto Weininger is registered in our Record of Births
for the year 1880. He was born April 3,1880. His father's name was
Leopold, his mother's Adelheid, nee Frey. His Hebrew name was
Schlomoh. The date of his circumcision, as well as the name of
the surgeon who performed it and his Jewish descent, can be shown.
Whether Otto attended any Jewish school or as a boy showed
any interest in the Jewish religion we are not able to say on the
basis of our registries.
In any case, he left the Jewish Congregation on May 28, 1902.
We hope that these details have served you satisfactorily.
Very faithfully yours,
Matrtkelamt der Israelitischen
kultusgemeinde in wien
Der Matrikenfuhrer
LETTER II
Vienna, March 5, 1938
Dear Doctor:
My reply to your friendly letter must, I regret to say, disappoint
you, because I am not able to say more about Weininger than I
have said in my little book about him. . . .
You say that in Scandinavia almost nothing is known about
Weininger. However, shortly after the German edition of Sex and
Character, a Danish edition appeared, of which you perhaps know.
I believe that Weininger was not personally known to Professor
Sigmund Freud, but he was interested in his theory of hysteria and
also perhaps learned much from him.
Professor Avenarius--you mean Richard Avenarius, the author of
Kritik der reinen Erfahrung--was not known to Otto Weininger;
at least he was not in the beginning influenced by Avenarius. In the
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? 202
Appendix
latter part of his work he disregarded positivistic philosophy and
turned to Plato and the philosophy of the German idealists, par-
ticularly Schilling.
These fews things will probably not help you very much, but I
have answered your questions as well as I could.
Very faithfully yours,
Emil Lucka
LETTER III
Budapest, March 9, 1938
Dear Doctor:
I am glad to know you through your letters. In the last years my
brother lived I was with him, and I can answer your questions. I am
glad that I thereby can be of service to you.
Otto did not personally know Professor Freud and to the best of
my knowledge never dealt with his works.
Otto's personal experiences with women did not influence him.
Please find an enclosed study by one of my young friends, Doctor
Paul Biro, who at twenty dealt very much with philosophy. . . .
Perhaps you can find something in this book which is unknown
to you and from which you may perhaps benefit.
I will photograph two poems written by Otto when he was a
student, which he gave me, and I will send them to you in a few
days.
You have not annoyed me at all. If you should come to visit here
sometime, I would like to see you. . . .
With kindest regards,
Rosa Boschan Weininger
LETTER IV
3-14-38
Vienna IX--19 Berggasse
Dear Doctor:
My relations to Otto Weininger were very complicated. It is not
possible to describe them in a short letter. A long thesis would be
necessary. I was the first one to read through his manuscript--and
the first to give an unfavorable opinion of it. His principal idea he
also got through me indirectly, and in a quite inaccurate way.
Yours sincerely,
Sigmund Freud
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? Appendix 203
LETTER V
Vienna
Grinzinger Allee
March 26, 1938
Dear Doctor:
I was a close friend of Otto Weininger, and his personality is still
of continuing importance to me. . . .
The power of his influence was in the human impulse which ac-
companied him and which expressed itself in all his shortcomings
and all his immaturity (he was just twenty! ). He was concerned
with humanity--all humanity, not just a part of it. He conceived
the idea that there is a living unity of the individual and the uni-
verse; his basic attitude was beyond sex. As a measure of pure hu-
manity, he acknowledged the superiority, the triumph of the spirit-
ual character over sex, a mastering of every drive--or, as it should be
called, what in human beings is more than man or woman. . . .
The dimensions of his thinking and creation were in accord with
his personality. His life was practically a restless process of contin-
uation which gave to every one of his statements a touch of religious
initiation, of clear apocalyptic growth.
Weininger's works are known to you. His book Taschenbuch
appeared at the end of the war. This book (with some letters) was
for a long time in Dr. Arthur Gerber's possession, and he gave me
this book in 1919. The book was deciphered by our mutual efforts.
It mainly contained notes of personal and weltanschavlicher nature,
which throw light chiefly upon his last days.
Allow me to mention that I have already published a book, Die
Erweckung (Berlin, Ernst Hofmann), in which I wrote a quite
extensive chapter about my experiences with Otto Weininger. I
regret to say that I do not have a copy. I would, of course, have sent
it to you if I had.
I greet you with sincerity, and I would be happy to meet you in
person.
Sincerely yours,
OSKAR EWALD
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? 204 Appendix
LETTER VI
Budapest
August 27, 1938
Dear Dr. Abrahamsen:
I beg your forgiveness for not having answered sooner--
(1) The next time I will send you a good photograph of Otto.
(2) 1 have a photograph which has never before been published.
