The Naked Mother or, Why Freud Did Not Write About Railway Accidents

Abstract

This paper examines Freud's approach to technology from two interrelated perspectives. First it discusses the way his theory presents technology solely in positive terms, as an instrument that expands human power over nature almost infinitely. Here the goal is to underscore a limitation of Freud's way of thinking about human creations, which comes to the fore in his somewhat myopic enthusiasm for technology. Then the essay elaborates on a void in Freud's writings, examining why he did not refer to railway accidents in his discussion of technology. It concludes with a choice of three possible answers: (a) that his theories allowed no conceptual room for accidents, (b) that his silence on accidents was conditioned by the emergence of his oedipal desire on the occasion of a railway journey from Leipzig to Vienna, (c) that his silence was caused by a fear of accidents that threatened to overwhelm him.