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pact is made in spite of reservations and longings, dating from childhood memories of an “Easter faith.”
The Faust-Margaret relationship has certain important structural similarities to the Freud-Martha engagement period. The two adversaries with whom Freud had real conflicts over Martha were her very Jewish mother, who was unenthusiastic about Sigmund, and Martha’s brother Eli, who functioned as head of the house (the father having died several years earlier). Freud held the “heartless” mother responsible for Martha’s leaving him in Vienna and going to live near Hamburg.25 And of course, Freud, who was so conscious of name similarities, must have been struck by phonetic parallels in the names of the two couples: Faust-Margaret and Freud-Martha. Cocaine and the DevilWe need now to develop a deeper understanding of Faust by showing the story’s connection to Freud’s use of cocaine. Freud’s important, rather lengthy involvement with cocaine is now being widely recognized.26 (Jones discusses cocaine briefly as an episode, but he plays down the subject to the point of distorting the record.27) Quite recently, both Swales,28 to whom this section owes much, and Thornton29 have made clear the pervasive effects of cocaine on Freud’s thoughts, moods, and fantasies. Freud began experimenting with the drug in 1884, when he was 28, at a time when cocaine was almost unknown in scientific circles.30 During the period 1884-1887, Freud took cocaine frequently, sometimes in heavy doses.31 After taking the drug himself and getting some preliminary reports from others, Freud published glowing descriptions of cocaine. Not only did Freud think at the time that the drug had anti-morphine effects; he was enthusiastic as well about its contributions to mental well-being. It was an antidote to his frequent depressions, and also provided increased physical strength and sexual potency. Like Faust, Freud was enamored of the idea of a drug-induced rejuvenation. Freud’s initial involvement with cocaine thoroughly captured both his emotional and intellectual interests. He enthusiastically recommended it to others, including his fiancée.32 He administered the drug (very likely via hypodermic needle) to his friend and colleague Ernst Fleischl, who was suffering from a drawn-out, terminal nerve condition that required the use of morphine to ease his pain.33 Freud got Fleischl to take cocaine, which he thought would cure his friend’s morphine addiction and have no undesirable effects of its own. Instead, after a brief period of benefit from the drug, Fleischl became addicted to cocaine as well as to morphine, and suffered particularly from cocaine-induced hallucinations |