891

Freudiana

By S I G M U N D F R E U D

MY S U B C O N S C I O U S J E W I S H N E S S
— J E W I S H T I M E S

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 increased 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 prophetess in my
case received a suitable reward, for
that matter.
          Perhaps this story is the source
of my longing to become great?
          But another impression of my
later childhood occurs to me here;
it may serve as an even better ex-
planation. One evening, in one of
the inns in the Viennese Prater,
where my parents used to take me
—I was eleven or twelve years old
at the time—we noticed a man go-
ing from table to table improvis-
ing verses on any given theme for
a small fee. I was sent to summon
the poet to our table; and he
proved grateful to the young mes-
senger. Before he even asked what
subject my parents wanted versified
he reeled off a few rhymes about
me, and in his inspired mood de-
clared it highly probable that I

would some day become a “minis-
ter.” I remember very distinctly
the impression this second pro-
phecy made upon me. It was the
time of the ‘commons’ ministry
in Austria; shortly before this inci-
dent my father had brought home
the pictures of the commoners who
now were ministers—Drs. Herbst,
Giskra, Unger and Berger were
among them—and we had indulged
in considerable celebration in honor
of these gentlemen. Even some
Jews were included in this minis-
try, so that every industrious little
Jewish boy was carrying a minis-
ter’s portfolio in his schoolbag.
          Perhaps it is to this experience
that I must ascribe the fact that
until a short time before I entered
the university I had the intention
of studying law, changing my mind
only at the last moment. For the
diplomatic career is not open to
the physician.

M Y parents were Jews, and I
have remained a Jew myself.
I have reason to believe that my
father’s family were settled for a
long time on the Rhine (at Co-
logne), that, as a result of a per-
secution of the Jews during the
fourteenth or fifteenth century, they
fled eastwards, and that, in the
course of the nineteenth century,

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D R . B . G a u z me this file
without any date or source

8                                                               T H E C U R R E N T J E W I S H R E C O R D

they migrated back from Lithuania
through Galicia into German Aus-
tria. When I was a child of four
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 special privileges there,
and was scarcely obliged to pass
any examination. Although we
lived in very limited circumstances,
my father insisted that, in my
choice of a profession, I should
follow my own inclinations.
Neither at that time, nor indeed in
my later life, did I feel any par-
ticular predilection for the career
of a physician. I was moved, rath-
er, by a sort of curiosity, which
was, however, directed more to-
wards human concerns than to-
wards natural objects; nor had I
recognized the importance of ob-
servation as one of the best means
of gratifying it. At the same time,
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
aloud at a popular lecture just be-
fore I left school that decided me
to become a medical student.

I M U S T have been ten or twelve
years old when my father began
to let me accompany him on his
walks and to acquaint me with his
views on the things of this world.

Thus, to show me how times had
improved since his youth, he told
me: “When I was a young fellow,
I walked along the street in your
birthplace one Saturday, dressed up
in my best clothes, a new fur cap
on my head. Along came a Christ-
ian who knocked off my cap with
a single blow so that it fell in the
gutter, and shouted to me: ‘Off
the sidewalk, Jew.’ ”
          “And what did you do?”
          “I went off the sidewalk and
picked up my cap,” was the calm
answer.
          To me this did not seem very he-
roic on the part of the tall, strong
man who now was leading a little
boy by the hand. I opposed this
situation, which did not satisfy me,
to another, which was more to my
liking—the scene in which Hanni-
bal’s father makes him swear be-
fore the domestic altar to take re-
venge upon the Romans. Since
that time Hannibal has always had
a place in my fancies.

M Y favorite hero during my
years at the gymnasium was
Hannibal. Like so many boys of
that age I sympathized with the
Carthaginians rather than with the
Romans in the Punic Wars. But
when I reached the higher classes
and came to understand the conse-
quences of descent from a non-in-
digenous race, when anti-Semitic
stirrings among my schoolmasters
challenged me to take a definite
stand—then the figure of the Semi-
 

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T H E C U R R E N T J E W I S H R E C O R D

tic general rose to even greater
height in my eyes. To my youth-
ful mind, Hannibal and Rome sym-
bolized the contrast between the
tenacity of Judaism and the organ-
ization of the Catholic Church.
          My admiration for the Cartha-
ginian general goes back, even fur-
ther, to the incident with my father
which I have mentioned. Again
one of the first books that came
into my hands once I was able to
read was Thiers’ “Konsulat und
Kaiserreich;” I remember pasting
little slips bearing the names of the
imperial marshals on the flat backs
of my wooden soldiers—and I re-
member that even then M a s s e n a
(the name being the equivalent of
the Jewish M e n a s s e) was my fa-
vorite. Possibly this was also due
to the coincidence that Massena
and I had the same birth dates,
mine coming exactly a century
later. Be that as it may, Napoleon
himself won a place in my heart
because his crossing of the Alps
linked him with Hannibal. This
idealization of the military type
may also be explained by the de-
sires aroused in early childhood,
when, as a child of two or three,
I played—now amicably, now bel-
ligerently—with a boy a year older
and considerably stronger than my-
self.
          When, in 1873, I first joined the
university, I was met by some ap-
preciable disappointments. Above
all, I found that I was expected to
feel myself inferior and an alien,

because I was a Jew. I refused ab-
solutely to do the first of these
things. I have never been able to
see why I should feel ashamed of
my descent or, as people were be-
ginning to say, of my face. I put
up, without much regret, with my
non-admission 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 impres-
sions at the university, however,
had one consequence which was
afterwards to prove important: for
at an early age I was made familiar
with the fate of being in the Oppo-
sition and of being put under the
ban of the “compact majority.”
The foundations were thus laid for
a certain degree of independence
of judgment.

T H E question of Jewish race
consciousness recalls a story
which a patient of mine once told
me. It illustrates the subconscious
hold of racial affiliations.
          “My wife was a Christian
and refused to adopt Judaism. I had
to become a convert to Christianity
in order to be able to marry her.
I felt some definite inner disin-
clination to change my faith; but
the end appeared to justify the
means, the more so since my ad-
herence to Judaism had been
purely a matter of form, so that
the act of conversion involved no
change in my religious convictions,
 

10                                                     T H E C U R R E N T J E W I S H R E C O R D

as I had none. Despite this, how-
ever, I always admitted my Jewish-
ness subsequently, and few of my
friends know that I was bap-
tized.
          “Two sons were born of this
marriage. They were raised in the
Christian faith. But when they had
reached the proper age they were
informed of their Jewish descent—
lest, influenced by anti-Semitic ele-
ments at school, they should be
provided with a quite unnecessary
reason for hostility to their father.
          “Some years ago the children
and I spent the summer vacation
in the home of a teacher. As we
were having tea one afternoon the
lady of the house, who had not
the slightest suspicion of the Jew-
ish origin of her summer guests,
made some rather pointed remarks
about the Jews. Of course, I
should have had the courage to ex-
plain the situation, in order to set
my boys an example of the ‘cour-
age of my convictions’; but I did
not care to provoke the unpleasant
discussions which usually follow
 

such declarations. Moreover, I
was afraid that possibly we would
have to leave the excellent quarters
we had found—in case our hosts,
learning that we were Jews, should
change their attitude towards us in
an unfavorable sense—and I was
loath to spoil the brief vacation
which the children were enjoying.
          “But as I feared that my boys,
in their innocence and candor,
might betray the fatal truth if they
were permitted to listen to conver-
sation of that sort, I thought it best
to get them out of the way by send-
ing them into the garden.
          “Run along into the garden
Juden (Jews),” I said and
quickly corrected myself, “Jungen
(boys).” Thus the slip of my
tongue provided an outlet for the
“courage of my convictions.” The
others, of course, drew no conclu-
sions from this mistake, for they
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.”
 

© Seven Arts Feature Syndicate