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He was a little surprised at the outburst. He had not thought that detached and lofty practitioners and men of science could be so angry at what was, after all, chapter and verse, a contribution to a branch of abstract thought, applied to medical science. He had worked with the famous Dr. Charcot in Paris. There are other names that figure in the historical account given us by Professor Freud himself in his short Autobiographical Study. We have the names of doctors, famous specialists, who gave an idea to Freud; we have Freud himself impartially dividing honors between Breuer (or whoever it happens to be) and Freud. We have Freud himself giving Freud credit for the discovery of the cocaine anesthesia attributed to Koller. But when I asked the analyst Walter Schmideberg when and how the Professor happened on the idea that led to his linking up neurotic states of megalomania and aggrandizement with, in certain instances, fantasies of youth and childhood, he answered me correctly and conventionally; he said that Freud did not happen on ideas. I wonder? And said I wondered. But Mr. Schmideberg repeated what already, of course, I was supposed to know, that the whole established body of work was founded on accurate and accumulated data of scientific observation. That is not what I asked. I wanted to know at what exact moment, and in what manner, there came that flash of inspiration, that thing that clicked, that sounded, that shouted in the inner Freud mind, heart, or soul, this is it.
But things don’t happen like that. Or do they? At least we are free to wonder. We ourselves are free to imagine, to reconstruct, to see even, as in a play or film, those characters, in their precise setting, the Paris of that period, 1885. Dr. Charcot was concerned with hysteria and neurotics this side of the border-line. That border-line, it is true, was of necessity but vaguely indicated; there were hysterics, neurotics on this side and the actual insane on the other but there was a wide gap for all that, an unexplored waste-land, a no-man’s-land between them. At least there was a no-man’s-land; at least there were cases that not so very long ago would have been isolated as insane that now came under a milder rule, the kingdom of hysteria. The world of medical knowledge had made vast strides for there was still a memory in the minds of the older generations of eye-witness tales of a time, here in this very city, when the inmates of the insane asylums were fastened with chains, like wild beasts, to the walls or to iron rails or stakes; moreover, the public was admitted at stated intervals to view the wild animals in the course of a holiday tour of the city. That time was past, not so very long past, it is true, yet past, due to the humanitarian efforts of the preceding generation of scientists and doctors. They had progressed certainly. And our Professor could, in point of fact, have visited the more “modern” foundations of that time and place. Paris? He was a stranger. 1870 was by no means forgotten. He had seen the fangs of the pack during his student days. He writes of his early days at the University in Vienna, “Above all, I found that I was expected to feel myself inferior and alien because I was a Jew.” He adds, “I refused absolutely to do the first of these things.” But there were others, here in Paris, inferiors, aliens certainly, who dwelt apart from their fellow men, not chained, though still (in more human surroundings) segregated, separated, in little rooms, we may conclude, or cells with bars before the windows or doors. An improvement certainly. They too “refused absolutely” to feel themselves inferior. On the contrary. These were special cases, but there was the great crowd at large, under observation at the Salpêtrière. But among the hysterical cases under Charcot’s observation and the insane of the young Freud’s own private consideration, there were incidents, unnoted or minimized by the various doctors and observers, which yet held matter worth grave consideration. He noted how the disconnected sequence of the apparently unrelated actions of certain of the patients yet suggested a sort of order, followed a pattern like the broken sequence of events in a half-remembered dream. Dream? Was the dream then, in its turn, projected or suggested by events in the daily life, was the dream the counter-coin side of madness or was madness a waking dream? There was an odd element of tragedy sometimes, something not always wholly on the physical or sordid material level. It was Hell, of course. But these people in Hell sometimes bore strange resemblance to things he had remembered, things he had read about, old kings in old countries, women broken by wars, and enslaved, distorted children.
There were bars before some of the cells (in this scene built up purely from our own intuitive imagination), yet these cages sometimes presented scenes as from a play. Caesar strutted there. There Hannibal — Hannibal? Why Hannibal? As a boy he himself had worshipped Hannibal, imagined himself in the role of world-conqueror. But every boy at some time or another strutted with imaginary sword and armor. Every boy? This man, this Caesar, who flung his toga over his arm with a not altogether unauthentic gesture, might simply be living out some childish fantasy. If he could examine the patient in suitable surroundings — but the patient shouted et tu Brute and became violent at any suggestion of approach or friendly contact. If he could have interviewed this Caesar a few years back — he had been a man of some prominence at one time — he might have been able to worm out of him the secret of his Caesar mania. The mind was clouded now but there was no report in this case of actual tissue decay or the usual physical symptoms that end inevitably in madness. Caesar? Hannibal? These were outstanding recognizable historical personages. But were these the entities that caused this — fixation was a word not yet coined in this connection. This man was acting a part, Caesar. Caesar? He himself, as a child, enacted a similar role, Hannibal. But was it Hannibal? Was it Caesar? Was it —? Well, yes — it might be — how odd. Yes — it could be! It might be this man’s father now that he was impersonating — wasn’t the father the Caesar, the conqueror, the symbol of power, the Czar, Kaiser, the King in the child’s kingdom — admittedly small but to the child of vast worldwide importance, the world to him, his home. The whole world for a child is its home, its father, mother, brothers, sisters, and so on — its school later and friends from other “kingdoms.” Why, yes — how clear it all was — this Caesar now? How had it come about? There must be something behind this collapse not noted in the record of the patient’s physical and even mental conditions and symptoms. There must be something else behind many of the cases here and at the Salpêtrière — not all of them — but some of them — and other cases. . There must be something behind the whole build-up of present-day medical science — there must be something further on or deeper down — there must be something that would reveal the secrets of these states of glorified personality and other states and conditions — there must be something. . Why, Hannibal! There is Caesar behind bars — here is Hannibal, here am I, Sigmund Freud, watching Caesar behind bars. But it was Caesar who was conqueror — was he? — I came, I saw, I conquered — yes, I will conquer. I will. I, Hannibal — not Caesar. I, the despised Carthaginian, I, the enemy of Rome. I, Hannibal. So you see, I, Sigmund Freud, myself standing here, a favorite and gifted, admit it, student of Dr. Charcot, in no way to all appearances deranged or essentially peculiar, true to my own orbit — true to my own orbit? True to my own orbit, my childhood fantasies of Hannibal, my identification with Hannibal, the Carthaginian (Jew, not Roman) — I, Sigmund Freud, understand this Caesar. I, Hannibal!