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to weave conjectures and speculations on a theme of this sort, but I am not aware of any
evidence that might justify one in attributing any lasting influence to the nannie’s theological
beliefs, and in any event the contact ceased at the age of two and a half. [Actually, the
contact lasted longer; see below.]59
This is a most curious statement, for what Jones is saying is that early childhood experience is insignificant in relation to adult behavior and personality.60 Surely this is an amazing position for a psychoanalyst of the classical type to take. Jones’s “unwillingness to weave conjectures” is all the stranger,61 since Freud himself stated (as quoted earlier) that his nanny was essential to his neuroses. Indeed, even Jones declares in Volume I of his biography, “Freud has taught us that the essential foundations of character are laid down by the age of three and that later events can modify but not alter the traits then established.”62 One does not have to consider that this theory of character is universally true to accept that it was most certainly true for its originator. One thing to keep in mind about Freud as a child is that he was attractive and precocious. Sajner reports that Johann Zajic, the landlord, years later recalled Sigmund in his Freiberg days “as a lively youngster who liked to play in the workshops and to make small toys out of metal scraps.”63 His genius for language has been remarked on by many (his German style is outstanding and is part of the power of his work), and apparently this gift was apparent from Freud’s earliest childhood. Certainly a child who could give even some semblance of a sermon when aged only two and a half or so was already giving signs of very early conceptual ability and unusual verbal talent. As an adult, Freud was fluent in English and French. He was also moderately familiar with Spanish, Italian, Latin, and Greek.64 Freud also mentioned that he was able, during the period of his own psychoanalysis, to recover some of his memory for the Czech language, which he had not used since he left Freiberg roughly 40 years earlier.65 (This would exclude a few short visits to Freiberg by Freud in his teens. At these times, he visited Jewish friends and spoke mostly German.66) For Sigmund, the world of the nanny would have been based on Czech (to some extent associated with Church Latin), while with his parents the language was German (and Yiddish). Language would have differentiated these two worlds rather sharply. The Nanny: How Long Was She with Sigmund?The nanny disappeared suddenly from Freud’s life. She was dismissed, sometime after December 31, 1858, but before the family left Freiberg. The first thing to establish, then, is when the family of Jakob Freud left |