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10 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. iiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiitiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiimiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiMiiiiiiiiiMiiiiiiiiiiiii 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