sonality, hence Tolstoy understood others as few people ever have. Understanding of others comes from understanding of oneself; psychological insight comes from self-consciousness. If one compares Tolstoy’s observations on human nature with Freud’s, one finds a striking agreement between them. Tolstoy said, “[Levin’s] conception of [his mother] was for him a sacred memory, and his future wife was bound to be in his imagination a repetition of that exquisite, holy ideal of a woman that his mother had been.” Likewise, Freud said, “A man...looks for someone who can represent his picture of his mother, as it has dominated his mind from his earliest childhood.”(13) Tolstoy spoke of “the vindictive fury which can only exist where a man loves,” and Tolstoy said, “where love ends, hate begins.” Likewise, Freud said, “Love is with unexpected regularity accompanied by hate [and] in a number of circumstances hate changes into love and love into hate.”(14) In his case history of Dora, Freud said, “the usual sexual attraction had drawn together the father and daughter on the one side and the mother and son on the other.” Tolstoy discusses this “usual sexual attraction” in the following passage: “The little girl, her father’s favorite, ran up boldly [and] embraced him....’Good morning’, he said, smiling to the boy....He was conscious that he loved the boy less, and always tried to be fair; but the boy felt it, and did not respond with a smile to his father’s chilly smile.”(15) Great thinkers often reach the same conclusions independently of each other. A thinker’s ideas usually come from his own experiences, or from his observations of other people. Since human nature remains much the same in different times and places, the experiences and observations of different thinkers are often similar. Truth agrees wit...
