| Chapter Four |
|
Freud and the Devil: Literature and Cocaine IN THIS AND THE NEXT chapter, we break from the chronological treatment of our subject to investigate a complex and in many ways sinister theme that makes a persistent appearance throughout Freud’s life. This theme is Freud’s relation to the Devil, and closely connected to it are the topics of Heaven, Hell, damnation, and the Anti-Christ. An alternate title for this and the next chapter, therefore, might be “Sigmund Freud’s Anti-Christian Unconscious.” One important point before beginning is that the present concern is only with the psychological reality of the Devil for Freud. The question of the actual existence of the Evil One is a separate question, a question that properly belongs to theology and philosophy and thus is outside the scope of this book. As we will see, the psychological question, by itself, is a rich and complex one. Freud’s Pact: Part OneThe idea of a Freudian “Faust pact” was initially but briefly raised by Velikovsky in 1941. Later the possibility of a Freudian pact with the Devil was given extensive biographical treatment by David Bakan in his stimulating 1958 book, Freud and the Jewish Mystical Tradition. I take up Bakan’s thesis, which first introduced me to this topic, in more detail later, but I should say right away that I do not agree with Bakan that Freud’s interest in and involvement with the Devil were primarily derived from his proposed contact with Jewish mysticism (especially the Sabbatian tradition). To begin with, the Devil does not receive much emphasis in Judaism, and typically may be entirely absent from the |