“The Question of a Weltanschauung,” “Thoughts for the Times on War and Death,” and “Why War?”

Freud’s New Introductory Lectures chapter, “The Question of a Weltanschauung,” along with several works of psychoanalytic social theory and little-known articles like “Why War?” and “Thoughts for the Times on War and Death,” indicates Freud’s continued interest in matters of psyche and society, contemporary politics, and history. In these works Freud discusses, among other topics, World War I, Bolshevism, and Marxism, and he mentions sociology. In other writings, like Totem and Taboo and Group Psychology and the Analysis of the Ego, Freud becomes an anthropologist. In accord with these interests, Freud’s case studies pay detailed attention to the class, cultural, and gendered contexts in which his patients live. This chapter discusses these interests as expressed throughout Freud’s writings. It explores the psychoanalytic weltanschauung itself, which has seemed to ignore both the social sciences and the social, and it seeks to understand this scotoma. It notices Freud’s passion and concern about his world, both present and future.