with the Devil, Hell, and related topics such as that of the Anti-Christ. All of this
very substantial Christian (and anti-Christian) part of Freud should provide an
understanding of his ambivalence about religion. It should also furnish a new framework
for understanding major aspects of Freud’s personality, and allow us (as already mentioned)
to re-evaluate Freud’s psychology of religion.
His Catholic Nanny: General ImportanceYoung Sigmund had a Catholic nanny or nursemaid at least until he was two years and eight months old: “I even retain an obscure conscious memory of her.”8 We will return shortly to the central importance of this woman, but first we need some background information. Freud was born on May 6, 1856, in the small town of Freiberg in Moravia — a town that is now part of Czechoslovakia and called by its Czech name, Príbor9 (see Figure 1-1). The town is 150 miles northwest of Vienna and about 12 miles from the border of present-day Poland.10 At the time, Moravia was an especially devout Catholic region; devotion to the Virgin Mary was so pervasive that Moravia became known as a “Marian Garden.” It was famous for its pilgrimages and shrine churches devoted to the Virgin (and, to a lesser degree, to St. Anne, mother of the Virgin). Nemec reports that even today Moravia still has about 250 Marian churches, chapels, and outdoor shrines.12 That is, Moravia is still Catholic in many respects, in spite of “fierce state repression”13 by the Communist authorities. Sigmund lived in this small Moravian town until he was three years old.14 Sometime in 1859, probably in late spring or early summer, his family moved to Leipzig briefly, and then went on to Vienna in 1860, where Freud lived all but the last 15 months of his life. The town of Freiberg had a population of about 4500, over 90% of whom were Roman Catholic. About 3% of the Freibergians were Jewish, and a like number were Protestant.15 The statistics for Vienna were similar, although there Catholics did not so fully outnumber other groups. As a result, Freud spent almost his entire life as a Jew in a society dominated by Roman Catholic culture. Any understanding of Freud and religion must always take into consideration this general situation. During Sigmund’s years in Freiberg, the Freud family lived on the second floor of a two-story house that was owned by the Zajic family.16 The living arrangements are in part observable in Figure 1-2, which shows the house in which Freud was born and lived during this period. The Zajics, who had lived in the town for generations, ran a locksmith business out of a workshop on the first floor; the upper floor, consisting of two large rooms (one on each side), was used for living quarters. |