1890.
Sigmund submitted his first treatise and his publisher turned him down.
“You are violating the sacred ten commandments, my good doctor, by not honoring thy mother and thy father. We cannot publish this.”
Freud changed his premise for the origin of neurosis from adults abusing children to something called the Oedipus and Electra complexes. The books sold, they weren’t on the fiction rack. He missed the rhythmic pollution that was the real culprit causing extreme anxiety in people of wealth and station. Vienna was a hotbed of Industrial Revolution just as was the rest of Europe. The pumping of steam engines was a pervasive rhythmic din. This was the first time that humans had to live with a repetitive mechanical pulsing that drove their daily lives. Now we know about rhythmic entrainment and how it controls our lives even when we are not aware of it. Especially when we are not aware of the dominant rhythmic pulsing around us. It is a survival mechanism that evolved maybe four hundred thousand years ago to ensure survival of the species. If there was a fast groove then there might be danger. If the grooves are slow, then we can relax and heal. The tempos around us trigger chemicals in our blood. It is a mechanical mechanism that has gone into overload. We entrained to organic rhythms for hundreds of thousands of years, obeying the tempos of the seasons, the tides, the migrations, the monthly and annual cycles of the universe. But the advent of mechanical rhythms created a fear. If we are not in synch with the dominant groove, then we may not survive. Now the tempos are so harsh, fast and unforgiving that we are making ourselves sick trying to catch up to the insanely fast digital tempos that are being forced upon us by the media, the advertisers, the movie makers, the pop music producers. Take back your groove. Theirs are unforgiving.