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saint. In short, an Oedipal drama (one involving a strong father, an unreliable second wife, and a potentially
parricidal son) surrounded Freud’s very name. It is likely, in view of the importance of names for Freud, that
at some time he heard the story. The following remark certainly implies as much: “…not even a first name
can occur arbitrarily to the mind, without having been determined by some powerful ideational
complex.”54 And Freud once wrote, “A man’s name is a principal component of his
personality, perhaps even a portion of his soul.”55
But let us return to Krüll’s thesis about Philipp and Amalia, for there are other pieces of evidence not mentioned by Krüll that make it clearer still that Sigmund suspected Philipp of having sexual relations with his mother—and, as a natural corollary, that he had doubts about who his own actual father was. Jones reports an anecdote about how the youngest child of Jakob and Amalia was named. This child was a boy, ten years younger than Sigmund. Jones writes: An example [of a “Family Council”] was the choice of a name for a younger son. It was Sigmund’s vote forr the name Alexander that was accepted, his selection being based on Alexander the Great’s generosity and military prowess; to support his choice he recited the whole story of the Macedonian’s triumphs.56 The very fact that Freud recalled the incident and thought it important enough to relate it to Jones many years later is interesting. (Freud was about 52 years old when Jones first met him.57) But second, and more importantly, who was Alexander the Great if not the powerful and successful son of a powerful king in his own right, Philip of Macedonia—a king who prepared the military and political conditions for Alexander’s own great conquests? Almost all biographies of Alexander begin with Philip and feature him rather extensively. To tell (as Freud did) the “whole story” is to tell of Alexander and of Philip. Hence, by insisting on the name Alexander, the ten-year-old Sigmund was indirectly claiming that his own brother was fathered by his half-brother Philipp, and implying (perhaps hoping?) that he too was the son of Philipp. It is also relevant that in successfully pushing for the right to name his own brother, Sigmund was challenging his father. To name a child, especially a son, is to take over the father’s role. Another piece of evidence for the Amalia-Philipp affair was brought to my attention by Peter Swales, who pointed out that there is no record that Philipp ever visited the Freud family once he left for England.58 Emanuel visited a few times; in 1883 Philipp did come to Germany, where he visited Sigmund in Leipzig—a visit Freud wrote about to his fiancée.59 But there is no record of Philipp’s ever visiting Jakob and Amalia in Austria. There seems, in short, to have been some real estrangement. When, years later, Freud was finally promoted to a full professorship at the University of Vienna Medical School, Philipp wrote |