Sigmund Freud's Mission: An Analysis of his Personality and Influence by Erich Fromm

Author:Erich Fromm [Fromm, Erich]
Language: eng
Format: azw3
ISBN: 9781480402065
Publisher: Open Road Media
Published: 2013-03-25T16:00:00+00:00

VII. Freud, the World Reformer

Freud was a child with a marked admiration for great military leaders. The great Carthaginian Hannibal and Napoleon’s allegedly Jewish general, Masséna, were his earliest heroes. (Jones, op. cit., Vol. I, p. 8) He was passionately interested in the Napoleonic Wars, and pasted the names of Napoleon’s marshals on the backs of his wooden soldiers. At the age of fourteen, he became very interested in the Franco-Prussian War. He had maps with little flags in his studio, and discussed problems of strategy with his sisters. (Ibid., p. 23.) These enthusiasms and interests have a double aspect: one is the interest in history and politics; the other is the enthusiasm for the great leader who influences history and transforms the fate of mankind. That Freud’s enthusiasm for Hannibal and Masséna and his interest in the Franco-Prussian War were motivated by his concern for history and political progress—and were not simply the boy’s passion for uniforms and battles—is borne out by the further development of Freud’s political interest. When he was about seventeen, he seriously thought of studying law; this was the time of the “bourgeois ministry.”

Shortly before, my father [so Freud reports] had brought home portraits of these middle class professional men—Herbst, Giska, Unger, Gerger, and others—and we had illuminated the house in their honor. There had even been some Jews among them; so henceforth every industrious Jewish schoolboy carried a cabinet minister’s portfolio in his satchel. The events of that period no doubt had some bearing on the fact that up to the time shortly before I entered the University it had been my intention to study law; it was only in the last moment that I changed my mind.43

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