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reappeared to Katherina Emmerich, “a pious German girl” of peasant background. This woman (her full name was Anna Katherina Emmerich) had religious visions that she described, including visions of Mary’s
journey to Ephesus and of the house (with its furnishings) in which she lived. Both the house and her bed were found by Austrian archeologists “exactly as the Virgin had described them [to Emmerich], and they are once more the goal of the pilgrimages of the faithful.”85
Various comments are in order here. First, Ellenberger has interpreted this article as showing Freud’s identification with St. Paul—someone like Freud, who founded a new “religion”—having serious trouble with a disciple (St. John-Jung).86 This interpretation is endorsed and further supported by Spector.87 Second, Freud’s interpretation of the origin of the Christian importance of Mary fits his theory that important people are apt to be “revenants” of still earlier figures. In fact, Freud’s concern with this topic can itself be interpreted as a “revenant” of (return to) his childhood study of the Philippson Bible. Pfrimmer88 has shown that the expression “Great is Diana of The Ephesians” and a treatment of her cult were to be found in this Bible, and that the discussion was illustrated by Philippson. Third, when at the end of the article Freud referred to the visions of Katherina Emmerich, who died in 1824, as being in “our own days,”89 he uncharacteristically showed no skepticism about her predictions as to the location of Mary’s house. Apparently an Austrian archeological expedition in the 1850s to the site of ancient Ephesus found what was reported to be Mary’s house.90 One wonders whether Freud ever read any of Emmerich’s reports of her visions or had contact with her story elsewhere. There are certain reasons to suspect so. The visions of this woman—a nun and a stigmatist, somewhat like Louise Lateau—were written down and published by Clemens Brentano.91 They were very popular in Europe and went through many translations. (They are still available in an American edition.92) Clemens Brentano was a famous romantic poet, part of the family connected to Goethe and a relative of Franz Brentano. Clemens spent years at the side of this bedridden peasant woman recording her extraordinary visions, which covered many aspects of ancient Jewish and Christian religious history. Her story would have been especially familiar to those in the pious Austro-German Catholic culture, such as Freud’s nanny. Another comment of Freud about the Virgin was made a year earlier, in 1910, and probably referred to women like Anna Katherina Emmerich: Think how common hallucinations of the Virgin Mary were in peasant-girls in former times. So long as such a phenomenon brought a flock of believers and |