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THE SOUTHERN ISRAELITE
My Subconscious Jewishness
One Cannot Deny The “Faith Of His Fathers'' With Impunity
By SIGMUND FREUD
In 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 there
fore 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
going from table to table impro
vising verses on any given theme
for a small fee. I was sent to sum
mon the poet to our table; and he
proved grateful to the young mes
senger. Before he even asked what
subject my parents wanted versi
fied he reeled off a few rhymes
about me, and in his inspired mood
declared it highly probable that I
would some day become a “min
ister.” I remember very distinctly
the impression this second proph
ecy made upon me. It was the
time of the commoners’ ministry
in Austria; shortly before this in
cident my father had brought
home the pictures of the com
moners who now were ministers
—Drs. Herbst, Giskra, Unger and
Berger were among them—and we
had indulged in considerable cele
bration in honor of these gentle
men. Even some Jews were in
cluded in this ministry, so that
every industrious little Jewish boy
was carrying a minister’s port
folio 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.
* * *
My parents were Jews, and I have re
mained a Jew myself. I have reason to
believe that my father’s family were set
tled for a long time on the Rhine (at
Cologne), that, as a result of a persecution
of the Jews during the fourteenth or fif
teenth century, they fled eastwards, and
that, in the course of the nineteenth cen
tury, they migrated back from Lithunia
through Galicia into German Austria.
One of the world’s greatest scientists
and thinkers delves into himself and analy
ses his childhood. You will never under
stand Sigmund Freud, the Jew, unless you
read this fascinating recollections.
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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 circum
SIGMUND FREUD
stances my father insisted that, in my
choice of a profession, I should follow mv
own inclinations. Neither at that time, nor
indeed m my later life, did I feel any par
ticular predilection for the career of a
physician. I was moved, rather, by a sort
ot curiosity, which was, however, directed
more towards human concerns than to
wards natural objects; nor had I recognized
the importance of observation as one of the
best means of gratifying it. At the same
.me, the theories of Darwin, wheih were
then of topical interest, strongly attracted
me, for they held out hopes of an extra ordi
nary advance in our understanding of the
world; and it was hearing Goethe’s beau!
tiful essay on Nature read aloud at a popu
lar lecture just before I left school that
decided me to become a medical si dent.
I must have been ten or twelve years
old when my father began to let me ac
company 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
Christian who knocked off my cap with a
single blow so that is 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
heroic 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 sat
isfy me, to another, which was
more to my liking—the scene in
which Hannibal’s father makes
him swear before the domestic
altar to take revenge upon the
Romans. Since that time Hannibal
has always had a place in my
fancies. * * *
My favorite hero during my
years at the Gymnasium was Han
nibal. Like so many boys of that
age I sympathized with the Car
thaginians 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
Semitic general rose to even
greater height in my eyes. To
my youthful mind Hannibal and
Rome symbolized the contrast
between the tenacity of Judaism
and the organization of the
Catholic Church.
My admiration for the Carthaginian
general goes back even further, to the
incident with my father which 1
mentioned. Again, one of the first book*
that came into my hands once I was able
to read was Thiers’ Konsnlat iind Kaw* m
reich; I remember pasting little slips heal
ing the names of the imperial marshal
the flat backs of my wooden soldie
and I remember that even then Mas* n a
(the name being the equivalent o: ie
Jewish menasse) was my favorite. P
bly this was also due to the coincid
that Massena and I had the same
dates, mine coming exactly a century k • •
Be that as it may, Napoleon himselt
a place in my heart because his cros
of the Alps (Please turn to page