|
celebrated the Jewish holidays, had regular Friday Sabbath meals, or kept the Jewish dietary
laws in the Freiberg days. There is no reason to believe that Freud’s mother gave him religious
instruction; she is known to have been uninterested in religion. There is no certain support for
it, but Jakob Freud probably said his prayers on Friday, thus providing some Jewish presence in the home.53
In any case, the nanny, this functional mother, this primitive Czech woman who was the “primary originator” of Freud, was his first instructor in religion. These first lessons were of a simple, no doubt often simple-minded, Catholic Christianity.54 What would the elements of this simple religious education have been?, The basic components can be gathered from Freud’s own words, from Jones’s comments, and (as I indicate throughout the rest of this work) by certain Christian themes and actions that occurred throughout Freud’s life. The basic concepts in Freud’s religious unconscious were the following: God, der liebe Gott (this, of course, is in common with Judaism); Heaven and Hell and the Devil (all related to the notion of judgment); and also salvation and resurrection. These last two themes, it will be shown, were associated by Freud with Easter, the celebration of the resurrection of Christ, and with Pentecost or Whitsun, the celebration of the receiving of the Holy Spirit. For Freud, as in standard Christian doctrine, salvation and Heaven would have meant being saved from damnation and from Hell. In addition, this very basic Christianity would have had a heavily Catholic character. Freud’s experience of Christianity was in the distinctive environment of 19th-century Catholic piety. This would also have meant a heavily feminine Christianity for Freud, the female aspect being represented in his life by his devout nanny and also by the Marian emphasis so common at the time. Freiberg’s main church was named after Mary’s birth.55 In the center of the town square was a statue of Mary56; such statues are very common throughout Austria and much of Czechoslovakia.51 The cult of St. Anne (or Anna), the mother of Mary, was also extremely popular in Moravia. Anna was a common name, and many churches throughout the region were named after St. Anne.58 No doubt Freud saw priests and heard occasional references to the Pope, but the strong masculine characteristics of Catholic Christianity would not have been an important part of Freud’s childhood experience. In short, Freud’s early religious experience had a basic Christian core, situated within a Catholic and feminine context. For some reason, Jones denies that Freud’s experience with his nanny contributed to Freud’s neurotic attitude toward religion: Much has been made of this nannie [sic] by writers who are eager to discover a neurotic origin for Freud’s negative attitude towards religion. It is of course easy |