Sergei Konstantinovitch Pankejeff (russian: Серге́й Константи́нович Панке́ев; 24 December 1886 – 7 May 1979) was a Ukrainian
aristocrat
The aristocracy is historically associated with "hereditary" or "ruling" social class. In many states, the aristocracy included the upper class of people (aristocrats) with hereditary rank and titles. In some, such as ancient Greece, ancient Ro ...
from
Odesa
Odesa (also spelled Odessa) is the third most populous city and municipality in Ukraine and a major seaport and transport hub located in the south-west of the country, on the northwestern shore of the Black Sea. The city is also the administrative ...
, Ukraine, best known for being a patient of
Sigmund Freud
Sigmund Freud ( , ; born Sigismund Schlomo Freud; 6 May 1856 – 23 September 1939) was an Austrian neurologist and the founder of psychoanalysis, a clinical method for evaluating and treating psychopathology, pathologies explained as originatin ...
, who gave him the pseudonym of Wolf Man (German: ''der Wolfsmann'') to protect his identity, after a dream Pankejeff had of a tree full of white wolves.
Biography
![Sergei Pankejeff with his wife c](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/d/d0/Sergei_Pankejeff_with_his_wife_c._1910.jpg)
The Pankejeff family (Freud's German
transliteration
Transliteration is a type of conversion of a text from one writing system, script to another that involves swapping Letter (alphabet), letters (thus ''wikt:trans-#Prefix, trans-'' + ''wikt:littera#Latin, liter-'') in predictable ways, such as ...
from the Russian; in English it would be transliterated as ''Pankeyev'') was a wealthy family in
St. Petersburg. Sergei attended a grammar school in Russia, but after the
1905 Russian Revolution
The Russian Revolution of 1905,. also known as the First Russian Revolution,. occurred on 22 January 1905, and was a wave of mass political and social unrest that spread through vast areas of the Russian Empire. The mass unrest was directed again ...
he spent considerable time abroad studying. During his review of Freud's letters and other files,
Jeffrey Moussaieff Masson
Jeffrey Moussaieff Masson (born March 28, 1941 as Jeffrey Lloyd Masson) is an American author. Masson is best known for his conclusions about Sigmund Freud and psychoanalysis. In his ''The Assault on Truth'' (1984), Masson argues that Freud may ha ...
uncovered notes for an unpublished paper by Freud's associate
Ruth Mack Brunswick. Freud had asked her to review the Pankejeff case, and she discovered evidence that Pankejeff had been sexually abused by a family member during his childhood.
In 1906, his older sister Anna committed suicide while visiting the site of
Mikhail Lermontov
Mikhail Yuryevich Lermontov (; russian: Михаи́л Ю́рьевич Ле́рмонтов, p=mʲɪxɐˈil ˈjurʲjɪvʲɪtɕ ˈlʲɛrməntəf; – ) was a Russian Romantic writer, poet and painter, sometimes called "the poet of the Caucas ...
's fatal duel, and by 1907 Sergei began to show signs of serious
depression. Sergei's father Konstantin also suffered from depression, often connected to specific political happenings of the day, and committed suicide in 1907 by consuming an excess of sleeping medication, a few months after Sergei had left for Munich to seek treatment for his own ailment. While in Munich, Pankejeff saw many doctors and stayed voluntarily at a number of elite psychiatric hospitals. In the summers, he always visited Russia.
Der Wolfsmann (The Wolf Man)
![Prescription Sigmund Freud](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/e/e8/Prescription_Sigmund_Freud.jpg)
In January 1910, Pankejeff's physician brought him to Vienna to have treatment with Freud. Pankejeff and Freud met with each other many times between February 1910 and July 1914, and a few times thereafter, including a brief
psychoanalysis
PsychoanalysisFrom Greek: + . is a set of theories and therapeutic techniques"What is psychoanalysis? Of course, one is supposed to answer that it is many things — a theory, a research method, a therapy, a body of knowledge. In what might b ...
in 1919. Pankejeff's "nervous problems" included his inability to have
bowel movements without the assistance of an
enema, as well as debilitating
depression. Initially, according to Freud, Pankejeff resisted opening up to full analysis, until Freud gave him a year deadline for analysis, prompting Pankejeff to give up his resistances.
Freud's first publication on the "Wolf Man" was "From the History of an Infantile Neurosis" (''Aus der Geschichte einer infantilen Neurose''), written at the end of 1914, but not published until 1918. Freud's treatment of Pankejeff centered on a dream the latter had as a very young child which he described to Freud:
:"I dreamt that it was night and that I was lying in bed. (My bed stood with its foot towards the window; in front of the window there was a row of old walnut trees. I know it was winter when I had the dream, and night-time.) Suddenly the window opened of its own accord, and I was terrified to see that some white wolves were sitting on the big walnut tree in front of the window. There were six or seven of them. The wolves were quite white, and looked more like foxes or sheep-dogs, for they had big tails like foxes and they had their ears pricked like dogs when they pay attention to something. In great terror, evidently of being eaten up by the wolves, I screamed and woke up. My nurse hurried to my bed, to see what had happened to me. It took quite a long while before I was convinced that it had only been a dream; I had had such a clear and life-like picture of the window opening and the wolves sitting on the tree. At last I grew quieter, felt as though I had escaped from some danger, and went to sleep again."
(Freud 1918)
Freud's eventual analysis (along with Pankejeff's input) of the dream was that it was the result of Pankejeff having witnessed a "
primal scene" — his parents having sex ''a tergo'' or ''more ferarum'' ("from behind" or "
doggy style
Doggy style is a sex position in which a person bends over, crouches on all fours (usually on hands and knees), or lies on their abdomen, for sexual intercourse, other forms of sexual penetration or other sexual activity. Doggy style is a ...
") — at a very young age. Later in the paper, Freud posited the possibility that Pankejeff instead had witnessed
copulation between animals, which was
displaced to his parents.
Pankejeff's dream played a major role in Freud's theory of
psychosexual development, and along with ''
Irma's injection
"Irma's injection" is the name given to the dream that Sigmund Freud dreamt on the night of July 23, 1895, and that he subsequently analyzed to arrive at his theory that dreams are wish fulfillments. He described his ideas on dream theory and provi ...
'' (Freud's own dream, which launched dream analysis), it was one of the most important dreams for the developments of Freud's theories. Additionally, Pankejeff became one of the main cases used by Freud to prove the validity of psychoanalysis. It was the third detailed case study, after "Notes Upon a Case of Obsessional Neurosis" in 1908 (also known by its animal nickname "
Rat Man"), that did not involve Freud analyzing himself, and which brought together the main aspects of
catharsis
Catharsis (from Greek , , meaning "purification" or "cleansing" or "clarification") is the purification and purgation of emotions through dramatic art, or it may be any extreme emotional state that results in renewal and restoration. In its lite ...
, the
unconscious
Unconscious may refer to:
Physiology
* Unconsciousness, the lack of consciousness or responsiveness to people and other environmental stimuli
Psychology
* Unconscious mind, the mind operating well outside the attention of the conscious mind a ...
, sexuality, and dream analysis put forward by Freud in his ''
Studies on Hysteria
''Studies on Hysteria'' () is an 1895 book by Sigmund Freud, the founder of psychoanalysis, and the physician Josef Breuer. It consists of a joint introductory paper (reprinted from 1893); followed by five individual studies of hysterics – Breue ...
'' (1895), ''
The Interpretation of Dreams
''The Interpretation of Dreams'' (german: Die Traumdeutung) is an 1899 book by Sigmund Freud, the founder of psychoanalysis, in which the author introduces his theory of the unconscious with respect to dream interpretation, and discusses what w ...
'' (1899), and his ''
Three Essays on the Theory of Sexuality'' (1905).
Later life
Pankejeff later published his own memoir under Freud's given pseudonym and remained in contact with Freudian disciples until his own death (undergoing analysis for six decades despite Freud's pronouncement of his being "cured"), making him one of the longest-running famous patients in the history of psychoanalysis.
A few years after finishing psychoanalysis with Freud, Pankejeff developed a psychotic
delirium
Delirium (also known as acute confusional state) is an organically caused decline from a previous baseline of mental function that develops over a short period of time, typically hours to days. Delirium is a syndrome encompassing disturbances in ...
. He was observed in a street staring at his reflection in a mirror, convinced that some sort of doctor had drilled a hole in his nose.
Ruth Mack Brunswick, a Freudian, explained the delusion as displaced
castration anxiety.
Criticism of Freud's interpretation
Critics, beginning with
Otto Rank in 1926, have questioned the accuracy and efficacy of Freud's psychoanalytic treatment of Pankejeff. Similarly, in the mid-20th century, psychiatrist
Hervey Cleckley
Hervey Milton Cleckley (September 7, 1903 – January 28, 1984) was an American psychiatrist and pioneer in the field of psychopathy. His book, '' The Mask of Sanity,'' originally published in 1941 and revised in new editions until the 1980s, ...
dismissed Freud's diagnosis as far-fetched and entirely speculative.
["I have become increasingly convinced that some of the popular methods presumed to discover what is in the unconscious cannot be counted upon as reliable methods of obtaining evidence. They often involve the use of symbolism and analogy in such a way that the interpreter can find virtually anything that he is looking for. Freud, for instance, from a simple dream reported by a man in his middle twenties as having occurred at 4 years of age drew remarkable conclusions. The 4-year-old boy dreamed of seeing six or seven white wolves sitting in a tree. Freud interpreted the dream in such a way as to convince himself that the patient at 18 months of age had been shocked by seeing his parents have intercourse three times in succession and that this played a major part in the extreme fear of being castrated by his father which Freud ascribed to him at 4 years of age. No objective evidence was ever offered to support this conclusion. Nor was actual fear of castration ever made to emerge into the light of consciousness despite years of analysis." Hervey Cleckley, The Mask of Sanity, 1941, fifth edition 1976, ] Dorpat has suggested that Freud's behavior in the Pankejeff case as an example of
gaslighting (attempting to undermine someone's perceptions of reality).
Daniel Goleman wrote the following in the ''New York Times'':
Mária Török
Maria Torok ( hu, Török Mária; 10 November 1925, Budapest – 25 March 1998, New York City) was a French psychoanalyst of Hungarian descent.
Torok is best known for her idiosyncratic contributions to psychoanalytic theory, developed in the wa ...
and
Nicolas Abraham
Nicolas Abraham (; hu, Ábrahám Miklós; 23 May 1919 – 18 December 1975) was a Hungarian-born French psychoanalyst best known for his work with Mária Török. The pair took a distinctive approach to psychoanalytic theory, holding that th ...
have reinterpreted the Wolf Man's case (in ''The wolf man's magic word, a cryptonymy''), presenting their notion of "the crypt" and what they call “cryptonyms." They provide a different analysis of the case than Freud, whose conclusions they criticise. According to the authors, Pankejeff's statements hide other statements, while the actual content of his words can be illuminated by looking into his multi-lingual background. According to the authors, Pankejeff hid secrets concerning his older sister, and as the Wolf Man both wanted to forget and preserve these issues, he encrypted his older sister, as an idealised "other" in the heart of himself, and spoke these secrets out loud in a cryptic manner, through words hiding behind words,
rebus
A rebus () is a puzzle device that combines the use of illustrated pictures with individual letters to depict words or phrases. For example: the word "been" might be depicted by a rebus showing an illustrated bumblebee next to a plus sign (+) ...
es, wordplays etc. For example, in the Wolf Man's dream, where six or seven wolves were sitting in a tree outside his bedroom window, the expression "pack of six", a "sixter" = ''shiestorka'': ''siestorka'' = sister, which gives the conclusion that his sister is placed in the centre of the trauma.
The case forms a central part of the second plateau of
Gilles Deleuze
Gilles Louis René Deleuze ( , ; 18 January 1925 – 4 November 1995) was a French philosopher who, from the early 1950s until his death in 1995, wrote on philosophy, literature, film, and fine art. His most popular works were the two volu ...
and
Félix Guattari's ''
A Thousand Plateaus
''A Thousand Plateaus: Capitalism and Schizophrenia'' (french: link=no, Mille plateaux) is a 1980 book by the French philosopher Gilles Deleuze and the French psychoanalyst Félix Guattari. It is the second and final volume of their collaborative ...
'', titled "One or Several Wolves?" In it, they repeat the accusation made in ''
Anti-Oedipus
''Anti-Oedipus: Capitalism and Schizophrenia'' (french: Capitalisme et schizophrénie. L'anti-Œdipe) is a 1972 book by French authors Gilles Deleuze and Félix Guattari, the former a philosopher and the latter a psychoanalyst. It is the first vol ...
'' that Freudian analysis is unduly reductive and that the unconscious is actually a "machinic assemblage". They argue that wolves are a case of the pack or
multiplicity
Multiplicity may refer to: In science and the humanities
* Multiplicity (mathematics), the number of times an element is repeated in a multiset
* Multiplicity (philosophy), a philosophical concept
* Multiplicity (psychology), having or using multi ...
and that the dream was part of a schizoid experience.
See also
Notes
References
*Whitney Davis, ''Drawing the Dream of the Wolves: Homosexuality, Interpretation and Freud's 'Wolf Man (Indianapolis: Indiana University Press, 1995), .
*Sigmund Freud, "From the History of an Infantile Neurosis" (1918), reprinted in
Peter Gay
Peter Joachim Gay (né Fröhlich; June 20, 1923 – May 12, 2015) was a German-American historian, educator, and author. He was a Sterling Professor of History at Yale University and former director of the New York Public Library's Center for Sch ...
, ''The Freud Reader'' (London: Vintage, 1995).
*"The Wolf-Man"
ergei Pankejeff ''The Wolf-Man'' (Pankejeff's memoirs, along with essays by Freud and Ruth Mack Brunswick), (New York: Basic Books, 1971).
*James L. Rice, ''Freud's Russia: National Identity in the Evolution of Psychoanalysis'' (New Brunswick, NJ: Transaction Publishers, 1993), 94-98.
*Torok Maria, Abraham Nicolas, The wolf man's magic word, a cryptonymy, 1986
External links
Freud exhibit which contains images of Pankejeff
{{DEFAULTSORT:Pankejeff, Sergei
1886 births
1979 deaths
Analysands of Ruth Mack Brunswick
Analysands of Sigmund Freud
Case studies by Sigmund Freud
Dream
People from Odesa
Russian nobility
Vasylivka, Odesa Raion
Emigrants from the Russian Empire to Austria-Hungary