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moved to Rome, where he became librarian to Cardinal Passionei. After his conversion, Winckelmann went on to become a famous scholar who was received in Vienna with great honor by the Empress Maria Theresa of Austria. On the way back to Rome after receiving these honors, he was murdered under strange circumstances by a fellow traveler.137
There are obvious similarities between Winckelmann and Freud: a poor background; the study of medicine in Vienna; great interest in the past, especially in Roman archeology; and, if Velikovsky is correct, a concern with conversion, based at least in part on the desire for professional advancement. (One wonders whether Freud’s acquaintance Herr Zucker, who was to show him the way to Karlsbad, was also associated with conversion. I have been unable to unearth any relevant information on this issue.138) Grigg, to whom I am indebted for bringing the importance of Winckelmann to my attention, has also very decisively connected Rome and the old nanny in Freud’s Roman dreams.139 Thus, Grigg further reinforces the Catholic meaning of Rome for Freud. Grigg is concerned to show how the nanny is part of Freud’s Oedipus complex; he argues that Freud’s travel phobia and his tendency to avoid Rome were part of unresolved Oedipal anxieties. It is possible that Oedipal anxiety was a factor in causing Freud’s travel fears, over and above separation anxiety. But, in fact, I am not impressed by a proposed Oedipal basis for travel fear; separation anxiety provides a stronger basis. Still, both could conceivably operate together. An evaluation of Grigg’s position is not necessary here, since his primary purpose is to emphasize the negative emotions of Freud associated with the nanny. I certainly do not wish to deny the existence of such negative feelings; however, Grigg, like the rest of the psychoanalytic authors, passes over the positive importance of this woman for Freud, though Freud himself directly testified to it (as we have seen). Grigg brings up in passing another Christian component in this dream of Freud’s. First, Grigg notes the similarity between the traveling Winckelmann and the traveling impecunious Jew (Freud, in his dream) who stowed away without a ticket. The problem of the nonexistent ticket is a symbol that Freud would have connected to his admired Heine, who was well known for saying that baptism is “the admission ticket to European civilization.”140 He was caught, and each time tickcts were inspected he was taken out of the train and treated more severely. At one of the stations on his via dolorosa he met an acquaintance who asked him where he was traveling to. “To Karlsbad” was his reply, “if my constitution can stand it.”141 But this term of Freud’s—“via dolorosa,” or “way of sorrows”—is a Christian expression, since it refers to Christ’s sorrowful journey to the |