Tausk, Victor (1879-1919)
Tausk was born in Slovakia, but grew up in Croatia. He started attending the University of Vienna in 1897, where he was trained in law. He married in 1900, and two sons were born in Croatia. In 1905 Tausk and his wife separated; Tausk had been dissatisfied with the law as a profession, and tried translating, poetry and play-writing, as he struggled at journalism. After a short depression and then a spontaneous recovery, Tausk turned to Freud and psychoanalysis. Tausk went to medical school in 1908, and began attending meetings of the Vienna Psychoanalytic Society (1909); he specialised in psychiatry, and his most original clinical achievements were to be his studies of schizophrenia and manic-depression. In 1912, when Lou Andreas-Salomé entered Freud's circle, she considered Tausk 'the most prominently outstanding' among Freud's adherents; they had a brief romance.
Freud was unhappy with Tausk's independent spirit, and the way Tausk could lock his original mind onto the same intellectual problems that were bothering Freud himself. Tausk was loyal to Freud throughout the difficulties Freud had with Adler and Jung. Tausk became the first in Vienna to give lectures on psychoanalysis for the lay public. He represented a broadening of the therapeutic interests of psychoanalysis; Tausk first originated the concepts of both 'ego boundaries' and 'identity'. After having completed his medical studies, Tausk was called up for military service (1915). Following his contributions during the war, Tausk requested a personal psychoanalysis with Freud. Freud refused Tausk, fearing that if he took Tausk into analysis the problems between them would worsen. Freud instead recommended that Tausk go into analysis with a psychiatrist some years younger than himself, a newcomer to Freud's circle: Hélène Deutsch. Freud had taken her into analysis with him a few months earlier.
Freud told her that it made an 'uncanny' impression on him to have Tausk at the Society, where he could take an idea of Freud's and develop it before Freud had finished with it. Freud complained that Tausk would not merely receive ideas, but would come to believe they were his alone.Any struggle with Tausk over priorities was extremely disagreeable to Freud.
Even though it seemed an offence to be referred to someone so junior, Tausk went into analysis with Deutsch. He then talked with her almost entirely about Freud, grieving over Freud's attitude toward him. Tausk felt that he had some ideas before Freud himself did, but that Freud would not acknowledge them. Having heard complaints and accusations from both sides, Deutsch thought there was reality to what both felt. Near the end of March 1919, after three months, Freud explained to Deutsch that Tausk had become an interference with her own analysis; Freud asked her to choose between terminating Tausk's analysis and discontinuing her own analysis with Freud. She unhesitatingly communicated Freud's stand to Tausk, and Tausk's treatment with her ended.
Tausk had been unsuccessful in firmly establishing a relationship with a woman. The precipitating cause of Tausk's suicide on 3 July 1919 was his being unable to go through with an intended marriage. Freud wrote the official psychoanalytic obituary, which blamed Tausk's death on the war. In private Freud did not allow himself to grieve. The inner circle of analysts was shocked at Tausk's suicide, readily believing that if Freud dropped someone it could lead to self-extinction.
- Roazen, P. (1969) Brother Animal. New York: Knopf.
P. R.