Why was Sigmund Freud interested in the Afsluitdijk

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In our first video, “How much of the Netherlands is below sea level,” we invited the Netherlands to take a seat on Dr Poldergeist’s couch. For this, our sixth video, focused on the wicked problem of land subsidence, we asked Sigmund Freud to join us. Readers of Freud know that he compared the work of psychoanalysis to Dutch land reclamation but, to the best of our knowledge, no one ever wondered about where he got his information. So we went to the archives and we found the article Freud must have read in his regular Viennese newspaper, Die Neue Freie Presse. Under the headline “Die Trockenlegung der Zuidersee,” published on 16 May 1929, a reporter based in The Hague provided a detailed and admiring account of the monumental dam that will forever be associated with Cornelis Lely’s name. He explained to readers that there are two components: the Afsluitdijk, as well as the four polders to be created in the newly dubbed IJsselmeer, starting with Wieringermeer. He noted that the ring dike around the first polder was being completed as he wrote. Heuer werden die gewaltigen Pumpen beginnen, die Wassermassen aus dem eingeringten Gebiet ins offene Meer hinauszuschleudern, und wenige Monate darauf wird man die letzten zappelnden Fische aufs Trockene werfen und über den Grund, über den vor kurzem die Barben zogen, wird der Pflug gehen. Die zwölfte Provinz Hollands wird ihr Bestehen beginnen, das sie nicht dem Schwert, sondern dem zähen Arbeitswillen der Bewohner des Landes verdankt.” We hear this language again in Freud’s lecture on “The Dissection of the Psychic Personality,” published in 1933. “Wo Es war, soll Ich werden. Es ist Kulturarbeit etwa wie die Trockenlegung der Zuydersee.” In our opinion, Freud is the Cornelis Lely of the human soul. • As always, a lot of research went into the making of the video. Here are some notes. • To get a sense of the staggering amount of human labor (Arbeit) that went into creating the Afsluitdijk in the years immediately following the stock market crash of 1929 we watched Joris Ivens’s brilliant 1933 documentary Nieuwe Gronden, which was the inspiration for our B W sequence of the last stages of construction. ( • Nieuwe gronden / New Earth (Joris Ive... ) • Bodemdaling (land subsidence) continues to be a huge problem in the Netherlands. It’s the reason 26% of the Netherlands is below sea level; it’s a major source of CO2; and it’s disastrous for the foundations of many homes and for infrastructure in the West and North of the country. Kay Koster, one of our experts, is a leader in subsidence research. See “Subsidence in the Netherlands” for more info: https://www.tno.nl/en/sustainable/sus... • The city of Gouda has become the face of urban land subsidence. https://www.volkskrant.nl/kijkverder/... • There is an excellent short documentary on peat called “Veen, de onzichtbare klimaatbom.” https://npo.nl/start/serie/focus/seiz... • Kay told us that as early as 1404 in some areas the punishment for draining terrain for peat extraction areas was amputation of the right hand. https://www.kngmg.nl/wp-content/uploa... • Reports from Antarctica indicate that melting processes are accelerating and tipping points may already have been passed. “In a worst-case Antarctic meltdown scenario, still deemed unlikely by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, sea level could rise 3 feet by about 2070, 10 feet by the early 2100s and 50 feet by 2300.” There’s a lot riding on that word “still.” https://insideclimatenews.org/news/26... • Funding for SLR research on Thwaites (aka “The Doomsday Glacier”) has run out and operations are closing down. This is a reminder that climate uncertainty is linked to many things, including political instability. A second electoral victory for Donald Trump could have devastating long-term consequences for the Netherlands. As Kay Koster says, “The flood disasters of 1825, 1916 and 1953 occurred during, or in the aftermath of, international conflicts and economic downturns. My gut feeling says this is no coincidence.” • DSM is short for the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders, which does not, as of yet, have a listing for “subsiding ego disorder.” • On page 86 of the 2023 WEF Global Risks Report we see that #1 risk for the Netherlands is “failure of climate-change adaptation.” • https://www3.weforum.org/docs/WEF_Glo... • Walter Jonkers, coordinator of the aspiring UNESCO Geopark Schelde Delta, showed us the watery location of Rommerswael, the third largest town in the province of Zeeland until it sank in the eighteenth century. • We regard this video as an animated psychogram of the Netherlands. Please comment or drop us a line. We’d love to know what you think.

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