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cannot bend the higher powers [the gods], I shall stir up Hell [the river Acheron].”94 This quotation is most significant, since Freud ultimately selected it as the motto not merely for a chapter, but for the entire book. These words, Schorske points out,95 are spoken by Juno, who hates Aeneas and struggles unsuccessfully to prevent the founding of Rome. Here is another example of Freud’s Hannibal complex. Once again, then, we have a powerful literary expression of a three-tiered universe, with Freud taking the side of the lower level, Hell, against the higher powers, who are on the side of Rome (and implicitly of Christianity). Freud’s ambivalence was clearly present here, in that he associated himself in this quotation with an enemy of Rome who is fated to lose: We know Juno cannot keep Aeneas from his destiny—his kingdom.
Three letters later in the correspondence (January 3, 1897), Freud was writing about his new psychology and about his optimism in the new year. First he commented (and here we can note that he was siding with the angels!): “When I am not afraid I can take on all the devils in hell.…”96 The letter continued with the idea that the first three years of life are the most important for the development of a person’s psychology. Freud then mentioned his hope of being with Fliess at Easter, perhaps in Prague. In the letter’s final paragraph, he proposed a motto to introduce his chapter on sexuality: “from heaven through the world to hell,” a quote from Faust. (With this, Freud was back in more familiar company.) A short time later (January 17, 1897), Freud took up the medieval notion of possession, which he said was “identical with our theory of a foreign body and the splitting of consciousness.”97 In this important letter, Freud proposed that the Devil is a psychological experience of part of the unconscious—one that is due to a split in the person, or one that can give rise to a splitting in consciousness. One part then comes under the control or influence of the unconscious “demons” (more is said on this in Chapter Five). In his next letter (January 24, 1897), Freud continued to note parallels between his own ideas and the medieval theory of demonic possession.98 He mentioned that he had ordered a copy of the book Malleus Maleficarum (The Witches’ Hammer), which he planned to study diligently. Since we can assume that he did this, it is useful to describe briefly something of the content of this still well-known (and infamous) treatise. This 15th-century work was written by two Dominicans on the subject of witchcraft, and it defines witches as possessed, either consciously or unconsciously, by the Devil.99 The Devil, demons, and evil spirits are featured in every chapter. Several chapters take up the ways in which a conscious pact or arrangement with the Devil is made; thus one section is entitled “On the Way Whereby a Formed Pact with Evil Is Made.”100 The pact may be made in a gathering of witches in a Walpurgisnacht setting, or alone. A clear rejection of God, Christ, the Church, and Christianity is an |