| Chapter Two |
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Childhood and Student Days: 1860-1882 RELATIVELY LESS is known about this period than about others in Freud’s life. Nevertheless, we do know about a number of quite important events and pieces of information bearing directly on Freud’ s relation to religion. Vienna Childhood: 1860-1872Freud described the first years in Vienna as “hard times and not worth remembering.”1 No doubt he missed the open fields and woods, his — playmates, and, as we have seen, most especially his “Amme-Anna” of the Freiberg years.2 The psychological difference between the two worlds of Freiberg and Vienna was described by Freud: When I was three years old, I left the small town of my birth and moved to a larger city. All my memories occur in the town in which I was born. In other words they fall in the second and third year. They are mostly short scenes [as we have seen], but they are well preserved and possess clear details of all senses … after my third year the recollections are fewer and less distinct.3 Jones also mentions that Freud’ s continuous memories began at the age of seven. In other words, Freud’ s early Viennese experience, from ages, four to seven, was one of few memories; what memories there were, as Jones and others have noted, were “evidently unpleasant.”4 As far as separation anxiety goes, the early years in this period would have encompassed grief and mourning, followed by detachment and, defense building.5 Here, Freud’ s formula for the development of the ego |