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and because, at the time, Freud’s use of cocaine would have made him especially liable to hallucinations of his own.
While Freud was in Paris, he was frequently taking cocaine. Three of the published letters from him during this stay in Paris refer to this: “a little cocaine to untie my tongue” (January 18, 1886); “I, quite calm with the help of a small dose of cocaine.” (January 20, 1886); and “a bit of cocaine I have just taken is making me talkative” (February 2, 1886).88 Both Swales and Thornton have suggested that part of Freud’s strange reaction to the Parisians was due to cocaine-induced moods. On December 3, 1885, he wrote Martha that “the city and its inhabitants strike me as uncanny; the people seem to me of a different species…they are all possessed of a thousand demons.”89 Freud also reported that in Paris he heard Martha calling his name—an auditory hallucination attributable to his cocaine use.90 A final note: We may recall (see quote, p. 104) that Freud said of this work that in it Hugo “taught me that the poet too is a priest; and thus I boldly substituted myself for the confessor.” Here we see Freud with a literary identity as poet describing himself as both like, and as in competition with, a priest. The Interpretation of Dreams: Rome, Malleus Maleficarum, Witchcraft, and Related ThemesThanks to his letters to Fliess, there is considerable information available concerning Freud’s personal motivations during the time, about ten years after his stay in Paris, during which he was writing the “dream book,” generally considered to be his greatest contribution to psychology. (Figure 4-3 shows Freud with Fliess at about this time.) The Devil and related topics made repeated appearances in these letters as Freud worked out his ideas. Let us look through this correspondence for references to the Devil and to related Christian themes. In the spring of 1896 came the first mention of a book that would eventually become The Interpretation of Dreams, some three and a half years later. In December 1896, Freud mentioned three chapters, and he gave the introductory quotations that would precede them. He wrote that one chapter would be preceded by these lines: They are exceeding all bounds, I fear a breakdown; God does not present the reckoning at the end of every week.91 The meaning of this is not entirely clear, since Freud did not identify the source, but anxiety and the fear of God’s reckoning are obvious. For another major chapter, Freud suggested a quote from Goethe (from Zahme Xenien), which translates as “Cut it short! On doomsday it |