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tation of Dreams (1900).45 Relevant here is a remark Freud made just after the passage quoted above: He claimed that earlier in the night before the dream he was discussing, he had climbed the stairs from the flat below, and it had occurred to him at the time “that I might meet a neighbor.”46 One wonders whether Monika Zajic (a member of the landlord’s family) or some other neighbor girl back in Freiberg was the female source of this early sexual excitement.
Let us stop here and take stock. Obviously the evidence so far does not allow a definitive answer; however, it does strongly imply that Freud was sexually seduced as a child, or at least that he was masturbated or taught to masturbate, and that this prematurely eroticized him. (That Freud had a long-term “problem” with masturbation originating in childhood has been suggested by Jones47 and by Bernfeld,18 and supported in some detail by Swales.49) In any case, it is certain that Freud’s own seduction was associated by him in some way with a nursemaid or female servant. It is possible that his own nanny was the cause of this association, but in view of Freud’s young age and his later connection of the nanny to strong castration anxiety, it seems more likely that she was not a true “seducer” and that some other nursemaid or servant girl was involved. A seduction experience even from the Vienna years, however, easily could have been projected back in time and associated with the nanny. Finally, the evidence also suggests that Freud was explicitly initiated into masturbation by his half-nephew John, and that this was brought on by John’s being seduced earlier by his own nanny. Because we know Monika Zajic was hired by Emanuel as the nursemaid for John and Pauline, and because of the case history noted above, Monika Zajic is again suggested as a seducer for the young Sigmund. There is also the implication that young Freud “seduced” or eroticized one of his own sisters, possibly at a later date in Vienna. A seduction by “cousin” John gives a reason for Freud’s life-long ambivalence in the many later adult relationships that Freud said were patterned on his friendship with John.50 These relationships (e.g., Freud-Fleischl, Freud-Fliess, Freud-Jung, et al.) combined homosexual and aggressive elements—a kind of Cain-and-Abel or Romulus-and-Remus pattern. Jones claims that this John was the most important figure for Freud’s psychological development other than his parents in the Freiberg years.51 It is of considerable interest that the one time “cousin” John visited the Freud family in Vienna, Freud and John read parts from a play. John played Caesar, and Sigmund played Brutus!52 The point of this interpretation is to make clear that, whatever the particular facts may have been, at a minimum Freud connected a nanny figure to sexual seduction, at least psychologically. Such a deep and early association—even if, as seems likely, it was a fusion of two or more |