choose to drink or not, to trade with thenwhite man or not, to unite with othernIndians against the white intruder ornnot. Nevertheless, it is unhkely thatnthese “choices” ultimately determinednwhat ensued. Time, as well as the whiteninvasion, conspired against the Indian’snway of life, and doomed it. Regret overnits disappearance understandably permeatesnthe pages of Hanta Yo. DnDrucker’s Gallery of PortraitsnPeter F. Drucker: Adventures of anBystander; Harper & Row; NewnYork.nBy David PietruszanJreter Drucker, that trenchant analystnof management, economics, and societynitself, has here written a memoir that isnnot really an autobiography, for it is notnreally about him. On the surface itnconcerns a series of rather remarkablenpeople that Drucker came upon in thencourse of his now four-score and tennyears. While the work is fascinating onnthe level of chatty portraiture, it is,nin fact, much more, for within eachnglimpse into these noteworthy personae,nDrucker proposes some insightnand wraps up some moral.nBut of course the common thread isnDrucker. Born in Imperial Vienna to anfamily of cultured and educated civilnservants, he saw the Hapsburg Empirencollapse and a tiny Austrian Republicnreplace it only to be swallowed up bynthe Nazi Anschluss. But even beforenthat he had left his homeland—tonWeimar Germany, where he worked asna journalist and as a professor, then tonDepression-era London as an investmentncounselor. And finally to America innthe 1930s—an impoverished but innocentlynoptimistic land. Here, he prosperednas a professor at Middlebury College,nas a pioneer student of the sciencenof management and as the author ofneconomic best sellers.nIn the course of this migration henMr. Pietrusza is an historian and a freelancencritic from New York.ncame across such well-known personalitiesnas Sigmund Freud, John L. Lewis,nAlfred P. Sloan, Buckminster Fuller,nMarshall McLuhan, and Henry Luce.nYet there are others: his grandmother;nAustrian Finance Minister HermannSchwarzwald and his pioneer-feministnwife Genia; the multitalented Polanyinfamily; Count Max Traun-Trauneck, anpatrician socialist, and Fritz Kraemer,nthe Prussian monarchist who later becamena Pentagon adviser—and who inn1945 “discovered” young HenrynKissinger.n1 he chapter on Freud is particularlyninteresting. It is not really based onnpersonal remembrances but on a witheringnanalysis of the myths of the Freudnpersona: “that all his life Freud livednwith serious financial worries and innnear-poverty; that he suffered greatlynfrom anti-Semitism and was denied fullnrecognition and the university appointmentsnthat were his due, because he wasna Jew; and that the Vienna of his day,nespecially medical Vienna, ignored andnneglected Freud.”nAccording to Drucker, Freud nevernknew poverty, he always maintained anlucrative practice, and, until Nazismnforced him into exile, knew no real anti-nSemitism. In fact, academic honors andnnotice came early to Freud. “No one wasndiscussed as much, or argued aboutnmore,” notes Drucker. “Medical Viennandid not ignore or neglect Freud, it rejectednhim. It rejected him as a personnbecause it held him to be in gross violationnof the ethics of the healer. Andnit rejected his theory as a glittering halftruth,nand as poetry rather than medicalnnnscience or therapy.”nFreud ignored all charity cases. Henheld that psychotherapy would be validnonly if the patient paid for it and if thendoctor was emotionally detached fromnhim—practices that Drucker describesnas “degrading the physician from healernto mechanic.” And beyond even thisnmercenary approach was the questionnof the very efficacy of psychotherapy,na new science that reminded many ofnquackery with “one universal psychologicalndynamism for every emotionalndisorder.” Freud, himself, often stonewalledncritics, even on such a basic questionnof the remission rate for neurosisnversus the cure rate for psychoanalysis.nCompounding the confusion was thenvery ambiguity of the new science. Whatnwas it trying to be.’ Medicine or culturalncriticism? “Psychoanalysis is the greatestncontribution to the art of the novel,”nsaid an admiring Thomas Mann, butnwhat this had to do with traditionalnhealing baffled many.nFreud himself rationalized away manynof the doubting questions and projectednhostilities onto others that he himselfnheld. “The Freud of the Freudian realitiesnis a much more interesting man, Insubmit,” says Drucker, “than the Freudnof the conventional myth.”nWhile Freud is a household word,nNoel Brailsford is not. In the twentiesnhe was an influential British journalist;nat his death in 1958 he was largely forgotten.nA militant atheist, a vegetariannand a socialist, he campaigned for Indiannindependence, opposed World War Inand, despite some lingering doubts, begannto eulogize the Soviet Union. Hisnmotive was the creation of a “PopularnFront” against Nazism, yet as thenhorrors of the purge trials mounted heneventually came to break with the Reds.nThe Communists and their supportersnthen turned on him with full fury. Henwas blacklisted and labeled a “fascist,”na “traitor,” a “warmonger.” Even afternhe offered a truce to the Soviets afternthe Nazi invasion of the socialist motherland,nhe was vilified.n•MMMHMHHHIS7nSeptember/October 1979n
January 1975April 21, 2022By The Archive
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