Huang Rongcun's Special Article: Cultural Vienna - Freud, Klimt, and Mahler

The cultivation of literary and artistic talent, like the training of medical students, must focus on people and human nature. Human nature is broad and requires interdisciplinary learning. To effectively carry out this interdisciplinary learning, it is best to first have a good university and a city that can drive artistic trends. We will discuss this idea in the context of Vienna in the 1900s. In the 19th century, the world's center of music was Vienna, the center of art was Paris, and the center of academia was in England, France, and Germany (Vienna's medical field took the lead after the mid-19th century). At the turn of the 20th century, Vienna made world-class contributions through its achievements in physics and medicine, Freud's psychoanalysis, and Austrian modernism and expressionist painting, capturing the world's attention for at least a few decades, known as the 'Vienna 1900' period (from the late 19th to early 20th century, 'fin-de-siècle', to the end of World War I in 1918). During this period, the University of Vienna, founded in 1365, was among the world's top five universities. Meanwhile, Taiwan was still awaiting the enlightenment of the New Culture Movement in the 1920s. The term 'fin-de-siècle' was also popular in Taiwan's art and academic circles in the 1960s. 'Fin-de-siècle' specifically refers to the era and artistic atmosphere of the late 19th century, as well as a unique aesthetic viewpoint, originally implying fatigue, sarcasm, pessimism, decadence, and indulgence. It draws from the roots of Western Romanticism but also provided the driving force for the rise of Symbolism, Modernism, and Expressionism. During this period, salon culture flourished in Vienna. Salons originally referred to reception rooms in mansions for hosting guests, extending to gatherings for conversation and expressing views. Salons were highly popular in 17th and 18th century France and later spread to other parts of Europe, especially in the 18th and 19th centuries, often gathering elites from various fields and leading academic and artistic trends. Between 1895 and 1900, Freud was in Vienna deeply contemplating his magnum opus 'The Interpretation of Dreams' (published in 1900). Around 1900, Klimt launched a radical new artistic trend and painted his representative works of the 'Golden Period'. During this time, Mahler served as the music director of the Vienna State Opera, which was the focus of the world's attention, and created a series of symphonies that would later have a huge influence. The characteristics of this cultural heyday are difficult to replicate in different times and places. The subtitle of this article, 'Freud, Klimt, and Mahler', is intended to highlight the unique aspects of 'Cultural Vienna'. During this 'Vienna 1900' period, artistic trends surged, such as the famous physician and novelist Schnitzler (Arthur Schnitzler; during this period, Vienna had other notable figures, such as the two literary figures who closely collaborated with the great German musician Richard Strauss, the poet and novelist Hugo von Hofmannsthal and the later novelist and playwright Stefan Zweig, but they are not included in the discussion as they do not fully align with the main theme of this article). There were also three pioneering modernist and expressionist painters: Klimt (Gustav Klimt, 1862-1918), Kokoschka (Oskar Kokoschka), and Schiele (Egon Schiele). Mahler (Gustav Mahler) took up the position of conductor at the Vienna Court (National) Opera in 1897 and was closely related to 'Vienna 1900', indirectly helping to transform the first generation of the Vienna School of Music (Haydn, Mozart, Beethoven, Schubert, and Brahms, among others) into the second generation of the Vienna School of Music, led by Schoenberg, Berg, and Webern. In this sense, Mahler played a role similar to Klimt in leading and defending. As for those who helped establish the new image of Vienna during this period, such as the new generation of architects who had many opinions about the authoritarian public buildings on both sides of the Ringstrasse (some modern versions of Gothic, Renaissance, and Baroque styles), in reaction, they developed a simple and functional architectural style, and the Vienna Workshop (Wiener Werkstätte) and Art Nouveau (Art Nouveau), which made significant contributions to establishing a new aesthetic of elegant living, are not included in the discussion as they do not fully align with the narrative focus of this article, which is 'taking a turn inward'. Core Idea: A Journey Under the Skin and Into the Heart Behind this inspiring story, of course, there is a central idea driving it. First, in society, before 'Vienna 1900', the Victorian era had long been too formalistic, with a severe discrepancy between appearance and inner self, leading to frequent hysterical symptoms (hysteria, referring to physical and mental symptoms that appear to reduce psychological pressure when psychological stress becomes unbearable, with two main types: conversion and dissociation). This led to a backlash, beginning to explore the inner self and the psychological and physiological states under the skin. At this time, Carl Rokitansky, the dean of the University of Vienna's medical school, advocated for the 'Second Vienna School of Medicine' to reform the shortcomings of the original medical school, beginning to pay more attention to the internal causes of human diseases, understanding the causes and mechanisms of diseases under the skin through dissection, pioneering the world in pathological anatomy. This approach can be distinguished from the clinical orientation of the first generation of medical schools and hospitals, but both were actually the same medical school (this medical school and hospital became independent from the University of Vienna in 2004 and were renamed the Medical University of Vienna). The initiation and achievements of pathological anatomy were one of the main reasons why the University of Vienna and its hospital became a world-class medical center at the time. The Austrian medical community (such as the Graz University of Medicine and its affiliated hospital, which later became the Graz University of Medicine in 2004) called this: 'Pathology without anatomy is useless, and clinical pathology without anatomy is dangerous'. Next came Freud's theories on the interpretation of dreams and the unconscious and libido, creating a golden age of psychoanalysis that lasted over fifty years. Finally, there was the modern and expressionist art that directly struck at inner desires, beginning to break away from the strong influence of French and German Impressionism and Post-Impressionism, making revolutionary innovations in ideology and technique, developing a unique style of painting that emphasized the expression of inner emotions and exaggerated the representation of the body and desires. Overall, 'Vienna 1900' had a common direction in various fields such as society, the medical community, and the art world, striving to embody the 'spirit under the skin', exploring the dynamic content inside the body and the heart, and the subtle aspects of desires. At the right time, all forces converged, each seizing the opportunity, pushing medicine and cultural expression to their peak. Freud and the Interpretation of Dreams Freud at NTU I wanted to understand my frequently occurring special dreams and further study Freud, so in 1966, I transferred from the history department to the psychology department at NTU. This was the first dream of many old-school psychologists in their youth, but after transferring, I realized that the timing had passed. The department did not offer specialized courses on Freudian theory, and only one chapter on psychoanalysis was included in personality psychology and clinical psychology. I guess the main reason was scientific. In 1953, scientists discovered that during each sleep cycle, people experience a period of regular rapid eye movement (REM), which is exactly when dreaming occurs. Therefore, dreaming is mainly caused by the automatic physiological process of the brain being triggered, not by the dark force of repressed past events. According to later sleep science research, in the laboratory, when REM is detected in sleeping subjects, they are woken up and asked to write down the dream they just had. The results showed that the vast majority of dreams are strange connections of familiar elements from the day, and very few are narrative memory content. From this, it can be seen that Freud's idea that dreams can be interpreted and have meaningful content is also unreliable. Dream interpretation opened the core construction of psychoanalysis Freud was originally a young neuroscientist and scientist who was highly regarded by the medical and scientific communities, but a few years before 1900, he abandoned the attempt to study mental phenomena using a biological model. The main reason was that he judged that with the scientific knowledge of the time, it was impossible to handle the unconscious desires (unconscious desire) related to emotions, which were very important in clinical practice. Therefore, he resolutely turned to the path of dream interpretation, but in his heart, he still hoped that one day science would catch up, and returning to science would be the right path. He believed that dreaming was driven by the dark forces of the unconscious, and he proposed that 'dreams are the fulfillment of wishes' (wish-fulfillme