already, then, substantial evidence for the nanny’s being linked to the emergence of a separation
anxiety in Freud. There are other examples as well.
Freud’s Travel “Phobia” and Separation AnxietyBiographers have commonly referred to Freud’s so-called travel phobia. At the time, travel was generally by train, and thus Freud’s fear was centered on an irrational avoidance of train travel. This fear (Reisefieber) was especially active, according to Jones, in the years 1887-1899, a period that included Freud’s own difficult self-analysis.108 Freud directly connected his travel fear with his suddenly leaving Freiberg, traveling by train to Leipzig, and then shortly afterward moving to Vienna.109 Jones, paraphrasing Freud, writes: “On the trip from Freiberg the train passed through Breslau, where Freud saw gas jets for the first time; they made him think of souls burning in hell!”110 The visual appearance of such gas lights in the city or in a dimly lit train station would have been very similar to the experience in a church of candles lit for the souls of the dead . The religious comment and imagistic associations for Hell (and, implicitly, of death and judgment) are obviously Christian, and are hard to account for on any other basis but the nanny. (This is also the conclusion of Suzanne Bernfeld and of Grigg.111) Now Freud’s fear of train travel was not a true phobia, as evidenced by the fact that once Freud actually got on a train and began to travel, the fear became markedly less or disappeared entirely. In fact, Freud liked to travel and spent much time doing it and enjoying it. (A true phobia becomes more intense as a person comes closer to the feared object or situation.) Instead, Freud’s anxiety was much like the standard separation anxiety shown by many children in their fear of going to school. Bowlby and others have made it clear that such fears are frequently an expression of the child’s fear of separation from the mother or mother-figure.112 It is not school or the like that is feared, but separation. In this case, obviously, what Freud feared was separation from the nanny who had suddenly disappeared. Little Sigmund may well have expected to see her again; even if she was indeed locked up, she would eventually be let out. But the Freud family left Freiberg shortly afterward, and this would have killed Freud’s hopes of being reunited with his nanny. And indeed he never did see her again. The actual reasons for the departure of the Freud family from Freiberg are not known. It has been suggested that because of investment losses in South Africa, prospects did not look good in this small town.113 This is possible, but even if so it does not explain why the Freuds left Freiberg |