ABSTRACT
Between 1923, when it was ®rst diagnosed, and the time of his death, Freud underwent a succession of surgical procedures for cancer of the mouth ± in total thirty-three operations over a sixteen-year period. He had been a heavy smoker ± twenty cigars a day since the age of 24 ± but he regarded smoking as a necessary accompaniment to his productivity as well as one of the greatest and cheapest enjoyments in life. When he tried to stop, he developed tachycardia, arrhythmia, hypomania (including visions), depression and a dread of dying. When digitalis controlled the racing of his heart, his depression got worse. Freud commented, `It is annoying for a doctor who has to be concerned all day long with neurosis not to know whether he is suffering from a justi®able or hypochondriacal depression' (Jones 1953, I, p. 340). After fourteen months Freud resumed smoking. In assessing his nicotine addiction, he reassured himself that his father, a heavy smoker too, had lived to the ripe old age of 81. No interpretation of a neurotic basis of smoking relating to his father is forthcoming from biographers like Jones, though his depression about giving up has been ascribed to his rather adolescent battle with Fliess ± a friend and father ®gure ± over the dangers of smoking (Schur 1972, p. 42).
