NATHAN G. HALE,JR.
249
sexuality before age eight as the result of "morbid predisposition." And
this, in fact, was precisely Moll's position; Freud's statement hardly consti–
tuted subjecting Moll to "victimization." Freud's irritation at Moll may
well have been caused by Moll's conclusion that Freud's methods did not
cure and that Freud might unwittingly have suggested the memories his
patients discovered.
In fact, Freud transformed existing theories of sexuality in children by
arguing not only that the sexual drive began in infancy but also that it was
shaped by the earliest family relationships. And it is this second component
that constituted his major difference with Moll and, I think, underlay his
jealous and angry claims for priority.
Freud was not pleased by the over-zealous attitude of some of his
defenders and referred to one of them as "that congenital fanatic of ortho–
doxy, who happens by mere accident to believe in psychoanalysis rather
than in the law given by God on Sinai-Horeb."
Let me turn to Peter Swales's conjectural assertion that Freud had an
affair with his sister-in-law and revealed the fact in a dream he attributed
to a young man of academic background he met on a trip. The argument
is clever. But does it seem plausible? What courting of disaster would lead
Freud to publish a dream and a dream interpretation that in fact would
have revealed to the world this incestuous affair-when within the year he
would attempt once more to gain a professorship at the University of
Vienna? As Swales himself notes, the revelation would have threatened his
marriage, his family, his professional standing. And Swales suggests that
Freud could publish it because the facts of his life were not known. But
this is nonsense. Plenty of people in Vienna and elsewhere knew the
Freuds and their household. There were rumors at the time, whether
founded on reality or not we have as yet no sure way of knowing.
Moreover, as Kurt Eissler has observed, why would Minna, on whom
an abortion presumably had been performed at Freud's expense, to believe
Swales, betray her lover to a total stranger, Carl Jung? I suggest all this
strains credulity, at least my credulity. And when did Jung reveal all this?
At the time the episode occurred, or in his dotage when memory some–
times slips? All we know now is that Jung told several people of the matter:
his mistress Antonia Wolff, a few others, and finally, the American theolo–
gian who first publicized the charges in 1963. It would help to know more
from any available information the Jung archives may hold. Until then and
until the Freud-Minna correspondence of those crucial years around 1900
is made available, we are, as Swales himself suggests, indulging in pure spec–
ulation, based largely on coincidences that I shan't enumerate, but for each
one of which an alternative explanation could be argued. Albrecht
Hirschmueller, who has examined available Bernays family correspondence
