Dual Allegiance: Freud as a Modern Jew

The Early Period

2 The Early Period Freud's Jewish and Humanist Educations Freud's Jewish and humanist educations are an important biographical crucible for his self-understanding, both as a Jew and as a humanist, and so their description as a context for understanding Freud's correspondence will be helpful. In addition, such a description will indicate the reservoir of Jewish knowledge and information that Freud might have drawn upon, even unconsciously, in describing himself as a Jew and in writing Moses andMonotheism, his final psychoanalytic self-description. We know from his own report and from observations by others that the young Freud was an avid reader, and so to some extent he was selftaught . But both Freud's parents played an influential role in his early education. Freud's sister Anna is emphatic on the point, saying in her Memoirs (1930), "My mother taught him at home throughout the primary school years,"l and reporting elsewhere, "My father taught him privately until he entered high school."z Anna insists that Freud did not attend a primary or public school (Volksschule) before he attended the Gymnasium, but Freud himself in a curriculum vitae statement written in 1885 reports the following: I received my first instruction at home, then attended a private primary school. In the autumn of 1865 I entered the Real- undObergymnasium in Leopoldstadt.3 So Freud's early educational influences were familial and they were strong (if we may so interpret Anna's slip). In order to flesh out a sense ofwhat this early home-centered educa23 24 DUAL ALLEGIANCE tion might have been like for Freud, we turn to his reported recollections . Some interpreters (e.g., Krull, Vitz) have drawn attention to Freud's earliest memory of religious instruction at the hands of his Catholic Czech nursemaid. Freud tells Fliess that she taught him about God and hell and he in turn gave dramatic expositions before his parents on "how God conducted hi:; affairs."4 At age three his precociousness must have been delightful. The effect of these teachings is unclear., though when this nursemaid was later dismissed and jailed for theft, the sense of abandonment may have produced an early distrust of Christianity and a dislike for its beliefs and ceremonies.sAdmittedly, some have seen in this early experience the root of an unconscious attraction to Catholicism.6 Paul Vitz details Freud's admiration for Christian art (both paintings and sculpture), Christian churches (e.g., Notre Dame in Paris or the Cathedral in Rome), ambivalent Christian literature (e.g., C. F. Meyer), and his attraction t%bsession with Rome over a twenty-year period (1882-1902) during Freud's early maturity.7 Vitz interprets this involvement in Christian culture during a "midlife crisis" as an attempt to recover his lost Catholic nanny, and he moves from that emotional nostalgia to argue for an unconscious attraction on Freud's part to Christian religion and its themes (rebirth, resurrection, even the Devil) and to conversion.8 Howe:ver, Vitz fails to distinguish between the fulfillment of a childhood longing for reunion with his nanny, which Freud may have felt unconsciously in Rome, and his conscious rejection of Christian religion, evidence for which is abundant and serious. Additionally, Freud's humanism enables him to enjoy the human struggle for truth, beauty, and wisdom in Christians (cf. his friendship with Oskar Pfister), without that admiration indicating an attraction to Christianity per se. Similarly, Freud's use ofChristian terms like "Easter" or "Pentecost" in place of Jewish ones like "Passover" or "Shavuot" may be more an indication of his educated assimilation to the majority culture than an attraction to Christianity, and though Vitz interprets Freud opening his medical practice on Easter Sunday in 1886 as an expression of "rebirth, a new beginning," related to Easter's theme ofresurrection, Jones points out that "to begin work on such a day seems like an act of defiance."9 The importance of biographical and cultural context in d'~termining the meaning of Freud's words and acts is underscored by this difference of interpretation over the meaning of Christian elements in Freud's life. With regard to the learning he did with his parents, Freud has given us a glimpse of an early conversation with his mother concerning the veracity of the creation account in Gen. 2:7. The six-year-old doubted whether "we were all made of earth and must therefore return to earth." [3.128.199.162] Project MUSE (2024-04-20 03...