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evident in his deep emotional response to Maundy Money by Titian (Figure 3-4). Here a positive identification with Jesus seemed to underlie his response. But in view of Freud’s later attraction to the Anti-Christ—(as in Signorelli’s frescoes; see Figures 5-7 and 5-8), and especially in view of his later identification with Oedipus, one must raise the possibility that the Dürer also appealed to Freud’s fondness for the coupling of opposites. No matter what interpretation is offered, for a Jew to have had such a picture in his office is strange indeed.
Another peculiar favorite image of Freud’s is mentioned in a 1926 letter to Havelock Ellis (the well-known early English investigator of sex). Freud, who had a modest amount of contact with Ellis over the years, wrote to Ellis in response to receiving a book from him: Although I cannot imagine being you—I just don’t possess your goodness…—1 nevertheless could not help looking for similarities and was glad to find one in the first chapter. The etching of St. Hieronymus [St. Jerome] in his study is also a favorite of mine and has been hanging in front of me in my room for years and perhaps some of the ideals you have realized in life have also been mine.79 The Dürer etching of St. Jerome is shown in Figure 6-5. It reminds one that Freud, not long after his strong response to The Temptation of St. Anthony, referred to himself as a monk in his study,80 and it again reinforces our picture of the religious metaphors that Freud used in speaking of himself. “Der Liebe Gott”Some very interesting details about Freud emerge from Jones’s reminiscences of their conversations together in the years before World War 1. In one of them, he relates: Freud was fond, especially after midnight, of regaling me with strange or uncanny experiences with patients…. He had a particular relish for such stories and was evidently impressed by their more mysterious aspects. When I would protest at some of the taller stories Freud was wont to reply with his favorite quotation from Shakespeare: “There are more things in heaven and earth than are dreamed of in your philosophy.”… When they were concerned with clairvoyant visions of episodes at a distance, or visitations from departed spirits I ventured to reprove him…. I then asked him where such beliefs could halt: if one could believe in mental processes floating in the air, one could go on to a belief in angels. He closed the discussion at this point (about three in the morning) with the remark: “Quite so, even der liebe Gott” (the loving God). This was said in a jocular tone as if agreeing with my reductio ad absurdum and with a quizzical look as if he were pleased at shocking me. But there was something searching also in the glance, and I went away not entirely happy lest there be some more serious undertone as well.81 |