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economically. Indeed, many were quite wealthy. Freud became a member of this class of society
after going into private practice on Easter Sunday of 1886 and getting married later that year.
Freud belonged to this class on the basis of his education and his friends; his financial condition
was much better than in his youth, but he was never what would be called affluent. On the other
hand, most of his patients were wealthy, influential, and from the established, rather
assimilated, older Jewish families.121
This group of people, a kind of “Our Crowd” in turn- of-the-century Vienna of which Freud was a part, was also primarily Jewish; one should add that in spite of anti-Semitism, its members were very active and influential in the cultural, social, and political life of Vienna.130 That Freud was part of this group is generally known, although the consequences of the fact that his patients were largely upper-class assimilated Jews and often related to the families of his friends, colleagues, and associates definitely have not been fully investigated. What is less known is that Brentano was also a very real part of this same group. This resulted from his university connections and from his politically liberal views, but it was also a consequence of his having married in 1880131 Ida Lieben, who came from a very wealthy and influential Jewish family that was closely allied with the liberal Jewish circles in the City.132 (Puglisi and Rancurello both report that Ida was a Catholic, thus implying that she had converted.133) Sulloway reports that Brentano and Breuer corresponded extensively with each other from about 1885 to 1895, and, of course, Freud was a close colleague and friend of Breuer134; Kraus notes that Breuer was Brentano’s personal physician.135 Furthermore, Anna Lieben, the niece of Theodore Gomperz and a member of Ida Lieben’s family, was a patient first of Breuer and later of Freud.136 What this means is that Brentano was not just an important university influence who was left behind after graduation, but that he must have remained a presence in Freud’s social and intellectual environment in the 1880s and much of the 1890s as well. This would have been in a time when Brentano was a prominent and respected figure, and when Freud, years before the founding of psychoanalysis, was still anxiously concerned with making his mark. ConclusionIn this survey of Freud’s youthful years, we have examined a variety of subjects, ranging from the proposed Amalia-Philipp affair and Freud’s rejection of his father, through the major impact of the Philippson Bible and his view of himself as the faithful Scipio, to the influence of Franz Brentano. And I think we can safely say that whatever the young Freud was, he was far indeed from being a “natural atheist.” |