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Much has been made of this passage as a source of Freud’s ambivalence toward his father. It certainly
is ideal for the precipitating of Oedipal motivation. But other, equally disturbing, and much earlier
experiences would have had similar but probably more powerful effects on Freud’s relation to his father,
and would especially have fueled Freud’s Oedipal motivation.
Krüll persuasively argues that the change in family life between Freiberg and Vienna must have been rather shocking for young Sigmund. First, they moved from a small country town dominated by native Czechs to a relatively urban Jewish neighborhood (Leopoldstadt).34 But the change in Freud’s parents, at least from his perspective, must have been the real change. In Freiberg the father, however distant and with his frequent travels, was very clearly the patriarch. He was the oldest, and was the head of a family which included his two elder sons, Emanuel and Philipp (and Emanuel’s family), plus, of course, his own wife and children. In Freiberg Jakob was the head of his own business, and was on a par with other Jewish businessmen (e.g., Ignaz Fluss) who were also in the emerging and profitable textile and garment business there.35 In Vienna, the situation was quite different. Here Jakob Freud was without any family except his brother Joseph, and Jakob was no longer an independent businessman. Instead, he apparently worked for others in the garment business; he never paid taxes, and the source of the family income is ambiguous. What is clear is that he was not very successful; his large family probably received considerable financial help from his wife’s family, who lived in Vienna, and from his sons Emanuel and Philipp, who had left Freiberg to settle permanently in Manchester, England. He also appears to have ceased traveling and was at home much more. Thus, for Sigmund, his father would have sunk from the status of a distant but impressive patriarch to that of a petitioner.36 To make matters worse, the Uncle Joseph mentioned above was arrested in Vienna in 1865 for passing counterfeit Russian bank notes. In 1866 he was sentenced to ten years in prison (he was apparently released after serving only four years). This incident was common public knowledge at the time, as it was carried in the Viennese newspapers.37 It Must have further weakened the status of the father’s family in the eyes of Sigmund. The whole affair covered the period from Freud’s ninth until about his 14th year. The authorities never did find out who the printer of the bank notes was; however, there is evidence to suggest that they strongly suspected Emanuel and Philipp, who were in England.38 Freud referred to this chapter of his family’s story only in the most veiled and ambiguous of terms, thus suggesting his embarrassment at the incident and his reluctance to be candid about it.39 But there is evidence of another, far deeper insult to Jakob Freud’s |