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zation, analogous to that of the Moorish king. Freud went on to claim that derealization depends on earlier memories and painful experiences that have probably fallen victim to repression. Although some of Freud’s repressed memories would have gone back to Freiberg, others would have involved Freud’s Philippson Bible days, for that Bible had a picture of the Acropolis and a section on Athens.107
Continuing his discussion, Freud referred to his schooldays, in which he thought the “limitations and poverty” of his condition would preclude travel to such a remarkable and distant place as Athens.108 His early longing for travel, rooted in dissatisfaction with father, home, and family, was unexpectedly satisfied. It was too good—too much of a wish—to have been fulfilled. He commented that to have reached the Acropolis meant that he really had gone a long way. Freud concluded this point with the following: So, too, if I may compare such a small event with a greater one, Napoleon, during his coronation as Emperor in Notre Dame, turned to one of his brothers and remarked: What would Monsieur notre Père have said to this, if he could have been here today?109 Here was Freud, the intellectual “conquistador,” comparing himself to Napoleon being crowned in Notre Dame (and Notre Dame, of course, had religious and “nana” associations for him, e.g., Slochower). He used such a scene to explain his mystical feeling on the Acropolis—feelings tinged with guilt over going further than his father. Bettelheim (1982) has identified still more of the religious significance in Freud’s Acropolis experience. It is Bettelheim’s thesis that the English translations of Freud’s German commonly distort the original, rich, personal quality of his words by rendering them into abstract, technical, or implicitly scientific English. As an example of this tendency, Bettelheim notes what is missing when the word heimsucht is translated into English as “visited.” That is, Freud wrote that he was frequently “visited” by the memory of his experience on the Acropolis. However, Bettelheim points out that the word translated as “visited,” heimsucht, “is fraught with special meaning, because in Catholic Vienna the Maria Heimsuchung was (and still is) an important religious holiday, celebrating the visit of the Virgin Mary to Elizabeth, an event depicted in many famous paintings and sculptures with which Freud had become well acquainted…” Freud, in referring to his recurring memory, “uses a word that alludes to a profoundly revealing event, the Visitation.”110 Again, we find evidence of the unconscious Catholic and Marian nature of Freud’s mentality.111 |