ABSTRACT
In a text that would be published later in the journal Imago, entitled "Thoughts for the times on war and death", Sigmund Freud discussed two themes related to the disillusionment caused by war. In wartime, cruelty, associated with infantile sexuality in the Three Essays on the Theory of Sexuality, becomes indissociable from the violence of the State, from its sovereign power that hides neither its greed nor its desire for power. When Freud speaks of disillusionment, he specifies that he does so not for sentimental reasons or out of an excess of empathy; he is exercising the right to condemn war for its methods and its goals. In 1914, shortly before the war broke out, Freud had left Vienna when the Wolf Man's analysis was concluded, to take a long vacation in Carlsbad. On 28 July, when Austria declared war on Serbia, Freud's brother Alexander wrote to him from Vienna: "There are really great rejoicings and demonstrations."
