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“bad nanny” component would be a kind of “witch image,” and because the nanny told Freud about Hell and presumably about the Devil, this internalized bad mother would be closely linked to demonic themes. Freud’s letters and other writings certainly do show a significant preoccupation with witches. Here it should be noted that witches are central figures in Goethe’s Faust, especially at the Walpurgisnacht orgy. We may recall that Freud’s important letter to Fliess of January 24, 1897 was all about witchcraft: He mentioned the Malleus Maleficarum, referred to a patient’s nurse as a witch, and so forth.115 His theory of hysteria as analogous to possession implied that all female hysterics are witches; his description of the patient’s nanny as ugly and elderly made her out as witch-like.
Peter Swales has very powerfully documented the witch theme in Freud’s thought in three of his papers on Freud.116 For an understanding of the depth of Freud’s personal “witch psychology,” the reader should read them. But some of this involvement is captured in two quotes of Freud. In Analysis Terminable and Interminable, using a line from Goethe’s Faust, Freud wrote: “We can only say, ‘So after all we must bring in the witch’—the witch Meta psychology.”117 Here he connected the witch to all higher speculation (i.e., “Meta psychology,” and, by implication, theology). And in a letter to Lou Andreas-Salomé, Freud wrote, “we must have recourse to the witch prehistory or phylogenesis.”118 In the context of the letter, Freud was implicitly connecting the witch to his own prehistory—his origins in early childhood. The actual trauma precipitating the split could have been the nanny’s abandoning Freud (when she was dismissed), as well as possible sexual abuse. Any tendency of Freud’s own mother, Amalia, to reject young Sigmund (e.g., to stop nursing him, or to nurse a younger sibling, or even to leave him with the nanny much of the time) could also have contributed to the “bad mother” image. Otto Kernberg notes the close association of the internalized “bad object” to the tendency to use the mechanism of projection.119 In addition, he points out that grandiosity and omnipotent thoughts and feelings, aspects of which often characterized Freud’s personality, are common features of people suffering from splitting.120 Kernberg also links experiences of the internalized “bad” object to feelings of the uncanny121—an emotion already documented as being of significant interest for Freud. The previous evidence, discussed above, is that Freud had some degree of serious identification with the Devil or with matters demonic. The “witch” or “bad mother” or “bad nanny” interpretation has been brought in as an example of Freud’s involvement with a closely related theme. It should be noted, however, that there is no evidence that Freud actually identified with the witch, but only that this subject was for Freud closely linked to the Devil. |