EMANUEL

Freud Tells Experiences of Youth
SAYS FAITH OF FATHERS CANNOT BE DENIED
BY SIGMUND FREUD

I
N my childhood I often heard the story
that at my birth my mother's delight at
the arrival of her first-born was in-
creased by the prophecy of an old peasant
woman, who declared that a great man had
come into the world. Prophecies of this sort
must be exceedingly common; there are so
many hopeful mothers and so many old
women whose influence on this earth is a
matter of the past and who have therefore
turned to the future. Doubtless the prophe-
cies in each case succeeded, suitable or not,
for that matter. Perhaps this story is the
source of my longing to become great?

B
Minister Predicted for Him
UT another impression in my later
childhood occurs to me here; it may
serve as an even better explanation. One
evening, on one of the trains in the Viennese
Prater, where my parents used to take me—
I was 11 or 12 years old at the time — we
noticed a man at our table from table to table
moving pieces on any given theme on a
small pad. I went over to him, to get close to
our table; and he proved grateful to the
young passenger. Before he even asked
what subject my parents wanted — which
he reeived off a few rhymes about me, and
in his inspired mood declared it highly plaus-
ible that I would some day become a min-
ister. I remember very distinctly the im-
pression that the prophecy made upon
me: it was the time of the commencement of
esty in Austria, shortly before this incident.
We often had to hear about the pictures of
the commoners who now were ministers.
Dr. Herzl, Göckra, Engel and Berger
were among them and we had indulged in
considerable celebration in honor of these
gentlemen. Even some Jews were included
in this Ministry; that every suburbanite
little Jewish boy was carrying a minister's
portfolio in his knapsack.
Perhaps it is to this experience that I
must ascribe the fact that until a short time
before I decided to the University, I had the
intention of studying law, changing my
mind only at the last moment. For the dip-
lomatic career was open to the physician.

M
Early School Days
Y parents were Jews, and I have re-
mained a Jew myself. I have reason to
believe that my father's family settled itself
for a long time on the Rhine (at Cologne),
that as a result of a persecution (of the Jews)
during the fourteenth or fifteenth century,
they fled eastward and that, in the course
of the seventeenth century, they migrated
back from Lithuania through Galicia into
German Austria. When I was a child of

I
came to Vienna, and I went through
the whole of my education there. At the
gymnasium I was at the top of my class for
seven years, I enjoyed all my privileges
there, and was scarcely obliged to pass any
examinations. Although we lived in very
limited circumstances, my father insisted
that in all choice of a profession, I should
follow my own inclinations. Neither at that
time, nor indeed in my later life, did I feel
any particular inclination toward the career
of physician, which I must rather, as a sort
of curiosity, which was, however, directed
more toward human concerns than toward
natural objects. So had I received the
importance of observation as one of the best
incentives of gratifying it, at the same time as
the theories of Darwin, which were then of
topical interest, strongly attracted me, for
they held out hopes of an extraordinary ad-
vance in our understanding of the world;
and it was hearing Goethe's beautiful essay
on Nature read out at a popular lecture
just before I left school that decided me to
become a medical student.

M
Father Relates Anti-Semitism
Y father began — 10 or 12 years old
when my father began — let me accom-
pany him on his walks and to continue it
with his views on the things of this world.
Thus he showed me times and improved
since my youth, he told me: “When I was a
young fellow, I walked along the street in
your birthplace on Saturday, dressed up in
my best clothes, a new fur cap on my head.
Along came a Christian, who knocked off
my cap with a swipe, threw it that it fell in
the gutter, and shouted to me: ‘F' I L L O F F
J E W’.”
“And what did I do?”
“I went off the sidewalk and picked up
my cap,” was the calm answer.

T
Jewish Humor
HIS did not seem heroic on the
part of the tall, strong man, the slow
was leading a little boy by the hand. I
opposed this situation, which did not sat-
isfy me, as another which was more to my
liking, the scene in which Hannibal swore
to take his revenge upon the domestic altar.
I take comfort upon the domestic altar
that time Hannibal has always had a place
in my fancies.
My love for my father during my years at the
gymnasium was Hannibal. Like so many
Jews of that age, I sympathized with the
C a r t h a g i n i a n hero, when I read the R o m a n
in the Punic Wars. But when I reached the
age of twenty and came to understand the
consequences of the descent from non-rights
ous race, when anti-Semitic stirrings began

SEPTEMBER 11, 1931

my schoolmasters challenged me to take a
definite stand—then the figure of the Semitic
general rose to even greater height in my
heart. I, my youthful mind Hannibal, the
Rome symbolized the contrast between the
community of Judaism and the organization of
the Catholic Church.

M
Claims Militant Nature
Y admiration for the C a r t h a g i n i a n gen-
eral goes back even further to the in-
cident with my father which I have men-
tioned. Again, one of the first books that
came into my hands when I was eight or ten
was T h i e r s ’ s “K o n s u l a t und Kaiserreich.” I
remember packing three slips of paper in
names of the imperial marshals on the flat
back of my wooden slippers—and I remem-
ber that even then M a s s é n a (the man, being
the equivalent of the Jewish m a s s a h ) was
my favorite. Possibly this also was due to
the coincidence that Masséna and I had the
same birth dates, nine months exactly
a century apart. Be that as it may, Napoleon
himself was a figure in my heroic poem; he
crossed of the Alps linking him with Han-
nibal. This identification of the military type
may also be explained by the desire, so strong
in early childhood, when, as a child of two
or three, I played at make-believe, now bel-
ligrant, now a conqueror, now a ruler, and con-
siderably stronger than myself.

D
Discrimination Shapes Outlook
URING my first year at the uni-
versity, I was met by some apprecia-
ble disappointments. Above all, I found that
I was expected to feel myself inferior, as an
alien, because I was a Jew. I refused abso-
lutely to do the least of these things. I have
never been able to say why I should feel
ashamed of my descent or as, as people feel
ashamed to say of my race. I put up with,
not much regret, with my not belonging to
the community; for it seemed to me that in
spite of this exclusion an active fellow
worker could not fail to find some nook or
cranny in the framework of humanity.
These first impressions at the university,
however, had one consequence which was
afterward of prove important: to wit, at
once I was more familiar with the fate
of being in the population and of being put
under the ban of the “c o m p a c t m a j o r i t y.”
The understanding of this laid on a certain
degree of independence of judgment.
The question of **J E W I S H** conscience
recurs in every Jewish or **N O N J E W I S H** minor once
told, it illustrates the subconscious hold of
racial affiliations.
“A chief wife was a C h r i s t i a n and refused
to adopt Judaism I had to become a convert

to Christianity in order to be able
to marry; but after some definite
determination to change my
faith, but the end appeared to
justify the means, that more re-
cent conversion to Judaism
has been purely a matter of form,
so that the act of conversion in-
volved no change in my religious
convictions, as I had none. De-
spite this, however, I always ad-
mired my J E W I S H religion
openly, and few of my friends
knew that I ever was baptized.
Two Jews were here at this
marriage. They were raised in the
J E W I S H tradition, and their family
had reached the proper age they
were informed of their J E W I S H
religion; they influenced by anti-
Semitic elements at school, they
should be provided with a full
and primary reason for hostility
to their father.

S
Cannot Deny Faith
OME years ago the children
and I spent the summer va-
cation at the house of my mother.
As we were having tea one aft-
ernoon a lady sat at the house, who
was on the right-hand side of a
Jewish family of her summer
vacation. She gave a few re-
marks about the J E W I S H course.
I should have had the
courage to clear up the situation
in order to set my boys an ex-
ample of “the courage of my con-
viction,” but I did not dare to
provoke the unpleasant discus-
sion, which usually follow such
declarations. Moreover, I was
afraid that possibly we would
lose our summer vacation, clear as
hers we had found—in case my
hosts, learning that we were
J E W S, should change their tolerant
attitude toward us in an unfavorable
one—and I was loth to spoil the
brief vacation which the children
were enjoying.
But as I feared that my boys
in my absence and under
might betray the fatal truth if
they were permitted to listen to
conversation of that sort, I
thought it best to get them out of
the way by sending them into the
garden.
“Run along into the garden,
J U S T said—and speak—“Run
along into the garden,” I repeated
myself. I understand
thus a slip of the tongue
or an act carried out by the N E G A T I V E
age of my conviction, the
J E W I S H conscience, tries to conclu-
sions from a trivial act, for some
attached no significance to it. But

I derived from it the moral that
one cannot deny the ‘faith of his
fathers’ with impunity if he is a
son and has sons.”

(Copyright 1931 by S. A. F. S.)