Brief Communications

FREUD, VERGIL, AND AENEAS: AN UNNOTICED CLASSICAL INFLUENCE ON FREUD

Justin Glenn

In his monumental biography of Freud, Ernest Jones records that in his final examination at Sperl Gymnasium young Freud earned high honors for his mastery of Vergil and Sophocles' Oedipus the King (Jones, 1954, vol. 1, p. 22). The connections between Freud and Sophocles' most famous hero Oedipus are universally known. I should like to propose, however, that there is also something of a pattern, which apparently has been over- looked, that connects Freud with Vergil's most famous hero, Aeneas.

One especially distinctive feature of Freud's personality was his tendency to identify very intensely and emotionally with certain figures of Greco- Roman literature and history, especially Hannibal (Tourney, 1965, p. 68; Freud, 1900, vol. 4, pp. 196-198; t Freud, 1901, pp. 217-220; McGrath, 1986, pp. 62-66) and Brutus (McGrath, 1986, pp. 285-287). Freud's strong tendency to identify with the heroes of classical antiquity extended to mythological figures as well, most notably Heracles (Freud, 1900, vol. 5, p. 469; Freud, 1923, p. 84). In this connection it is noteworthy that Vergil's Aeneid (7.312) is the very cornerstone of psychoanalysis, the opening words of Freud's The Interpretation of Dreams: Flectere si nequeo superos, Ache- ronta movebo ("If I cannot bend the gods of heaven, I shall move the powers of hell"). Likewise, near the beginning of The Psychopathology of Everyday Life Freud takes as his starting point a lapse of memory which a friend suf- fered when trying to recall a line from Vergil'sAeneid (Freud, 1901, pp. 8-9).

Is it sheer coincidence that lines from the Aeneid occupy such prominent positions in Freud's two most prominent works? Or is this possibly the tip of an iceberg, which serves to alert us to a subtle series of parallels pointing to an unconscious identification of Freud with Aeneas? In view of Freud's well-documented and self-confessed tendency to identify very intensely with classical heroes, the following parallels become even more striking.

1. The opening lines of the Aeneid identify the hero as "much tossed a b o u t . . , on the high sea" and a member of a "despised race" (genus

Justin Glenn, Ph.D., Department of Classics, Florida State University.

The American Journal of Psychoanalysis © 1987 Association for the Advancement of Psychoanalysis

VoL 47, No. 3, 1987

279

280 GLENN

invisum: Aen. 1.28); yet, in spite of these obstacles, he persevered and laid the foundations of a mighty empire. (In writing his "History of the Psycho- analytic Movement," Freud took as its motto fluctuat nec mergitur: "It is storm-tossed, but it does not sink" (Freud, 1914, p. 7). These words are actually taken from the coat of arms of the city of Paris, but they seem especially appropriate to the storm-tossed hero of the Aeneid. Freud was also keenly aware throughout his career that he suffered as a member of a "despised race": his Jewish ancestry was the focal point of much opposition that he met from very powerful, often anti-Semitic forces in Vienna. This often extended, regrettably, to academic and professional circles, and it was a severe stumbling block to Freud's initial struggles to present and find acceptance for his monumental theories.

2. Like Aeneas, Freud intensely prided himself on his "filial piety" (Freud, 1936, pp. 247-248).

3. On several occasions dreams decisively prodded, guided, and con- firmed Aeneas in his journey toward the kingdom promised him by fate (Aen. 2.293-295, 3.147-171, and 8.26-67). (It was Freud's own dreams- and later those of his patients-which guided and confirmed his first crucial efforts in laying the foundation of psychoanalysis).

4. Aeneas succeeded in journeying to the underworld, where he gained much knowledge and learned many secrets in that strange realm which Vergil often describes as a land of dreams (Aen. 6.283-284, 702, 893-898). (Twice in his writings Freud uses the mythological underworld as a symbol of the unconscious: Freud, 1900, vo[. 4, p. 249; vol. 5, p. 553). His greatest achievement was to gain access to the world of our unconscious, and in discovering the secrets of dreams he found the "Royal Road" to that hidden world (Freud, 1900, vol. 5, p. 608; Freud, 1910, p. 33).

I am tempted to believe that at least a small part of the forces that inspired and impelled Freud toward his great discoveries was a powerful but uncon- scious remnant of a childhood hero worship of or identification with Aeneas. Such a situation would be somewhat comparable (though on a much less conscious level) to the strange preoccupation with Homeric mythology which drove Heinrich Schliemann toward his famous archaeological discov- eries. In fact, a few months before the publication of his The Interpretation of Dreams, Freud recorded these thoughts in a private letter to Wilhelm Fliess:

I have bought myself Schliemann's Ilios and enjoyed the account of his childhood. The man found happiness in finding Priam's treasure, because happiness comes only from the fulfillment of a childhood wish. (Freud, 1954, p. 282)

NOTES

1. For references to Freud, volume and page numbers are from the Standard Edition.

FREUD, VERGIL, AND AENEAS 281

Freud, S. (1900). The Interpretation of Dreams. In Standard Edition, Vols. 4-5. London: Hogarth Press, 1953.

Freud, S. (1901). The Psychopathology of Everyday Life. In Standard Edition, Vol. 6. London: Hogarth Press, 1960.

Freud, S. (1910). Five lectures on psychoanalysis. Standard Edition, Vot. 11, pp. 1-56. London: Hogarth Press, 1957.

Freud, S. (1914). On the history of the psychoanalytic movement. Standard Edition, Vol. 14, pp. 1-66. London: Hogarth Press, 1957.

Freud, S. (1923). A seventeenth-century demonological neurosis. Standard Edition, Vol. 19, pp. 67-105. London: Hogarth Press, 1961.

Freud, S. (1936). A disturbance of memory on the Acropolis. Standard Edition, Vol. 22, pp..237-248. London: Hogarth Press, 1964.

Freud, S. (1954). In Marie Bonaparte, Anna Freud, and Ernst Kris (Eds.), The Origins of Psycho-Analysis: Letters to Wilhelm Fliess. New York: Basic Books.

Jones, E. (1954). Sigmund Freud: His Life and Work, 3 vols. London: The Hogarth Press.

McGrath, W.J. (1986). Freud's Discovery of Psychoanalysis. Ithaca and London: Cornell University Press.

Tourney, G. (1965). Freud and the Greeks: A study of the influence of classical Greek mythology and philosophy upon the development of Freudian thought. J. Hist. Behav. Sci., 1: 67-85.

Address correspondence to: Justin Glenn, Ph.D., Department of Classics, Florida State University, Tallahassee, FL 32306.