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for natural science expresses itself very early. Certainly, by the age of 16 or 17, a future great biologist would have shown his interest in nature, physics, chemistry, or mathematics. Except for a minor interest in plants and flowers (a theme that showed up in his dreams), Freud showed none of this; in contrast, his youthful involvement in languages and literature, such as the Philippson Bible and the works of Cervantes, Goethe, and others, was already substantial. In his autobiography, Freud made his fundamental cultural and nonscientific mentality explicit:
My interest, after making a lifelong détour through the natural sciences, medicine, and psychotherapy, returned to the cultural problems which had fascinated me long before, when I was a youth scarcely old enough for thinking: At the very climax of my psycho-analytic work, in 1912, 1 had already attempted to make use of the newly discovered findings of analysis in order to investigate the origins of religion and morality.10 And, in fact, it has been on literature, the humanities, cultural theory, and religion that Freud has made his mark. With this in mind, I now take up a discussion of a series of literary works that made up a large proportion of those important in Freud’s life. These works give star billing to the Devil.11 Flaubert’s The Temptation of St. AnthonyAlong with Don Quixote (discussed in Chapter Two), the other book that, according to Jones, made the deepest impression on Freud in his late 20s was Gustave Flaubert’s The Temptation of St. Anthony. He read this book in July 1883, while on his first visit to the Alps with his mentor Breuer; he was visiting with the very successful Breuer at his vacation home in Gmunden.12 The book is worth summarizing, for it provides a good example of Freud’s immersion in a heavily “Christianized” piece of literature. But first, a description of Freud’s reaction to The Temptation is in order. Jones quotes a letter of Freud’s: I was already deeply moved by the splendid panorama, and now on top of it all came this book which in the most condensed fashion and with unsurpassable vividness throws at one’s head the whole trashy world: for it calls up not only the great problems of knowledge, but the real riddles of life, all the conflicts of feelings and impulses; and it confirms the awareness of our perplexity in the mysteriousness that reigns everywhere.13 Jones says about this letter: “Then comes a long and lively description of the contents of the book, which he [Freud] likens to a Walpurgisnacht” [Witches’ Sabbath].14 |