Sigmund Freud* Read Free Page A

out to be his father, the woman his own mother. Upon learning what he’d done, Oedipus blinded himself. This tragedy, popular from ancient times to this day, stirred Freud greatly as he put in long hours translating it from Greek into German. Full of significance for him as a student, the story was to reveal even deeper meanings to Freud years later.
    Upon graduation, his plan was to go to the University of Vienna and study law. He was ambitious and wanted to help people, just as he’d been improving the lives of his hapless siblings. Perhaps he would become a political leader, now that Jews were allowed to work in the government.
    But something else began luring him. When he was seventeen, he attended the World Exhibition in Vienna, a showcase for science and technology, the biggest display thus far in Europe. Freud was so stimulated that he went every day all that summer, seeing thousands of exhibits—steam engines, the latest in first-aid practices, machines that mass-produced goods. The future was in science.
    That same year, he went to a public lecture where a scientist read aloud an essay attributed to Germany’s great poet, Goethe. Called “On Nature,” it was a mushy ode to the mysteries of nature, portrayed as a forever-nurturing mother.
    Freud promptly went home and announced in a letter to a friend, “I have determined to become a natural scientist. . . . I shall gain insight into the age-old dossiers of Nature, perhaps even eavesdrop on her eternal processes, and share my findings with anyone who wants to learn.”
    He was switching from law to science. He made a snap decision that science would be the arena where he would accomplish “deeds of improbable greatness.” Freud was never one to underestimate himself. Science would be the weapon he would wield against the forces of darkness, the many problems in the world.
    In 1873 he entered the University of Vienna to study zoology, the branch of biology that focuses on animal life.
    At this time he had a favorite fantasy. On the university campus were statues of professors from days gone by. He liked to imagine that one day a statue of Sigmund Freud would join them. He could even see the caption on it: a quotation from the play Oedipus Rex —“He divined the famous riddle and was a most mighty man.”
    As he later wrote, a little more modestly, “I felt an overpowering need to understand something of the riddles of the world in which we live and perhaps to contribute something to their solution.”
    What particular riddle he would solve, he didn’t know. Not yet.

CHAPTER TWO
    Dissecting Four Hundred Eels
    FOR THE NEXT nine years Freud stayed at the University of Vienna, his eye to the microscope.
    All the Freuds made sacrifices for Sigi’s studies. By now the family lived in a better apartment—but he was the only one with his own room and an oil lamp. The other eight people, crammed into the three bedrooms, had to make do with candlelight. When he complained that a sister’s piano practice interfered with his concentration, the piano disappeared. He ate dinner alone in his room, occasionally having friends over for talks about science.
    The university was famous for its brilliant science professors, particularly in medicine, most of them trained in Germany. These sterling professors attracted men (women were barred) from all over Europe and even the United States. At the time, students and faculty alike shared a sense of optimism about science, particularly biology. “Biology is truly a land of unlimited possibilities,” Freud wrote late in life.
    In 1859 Charles Darwin had rocked the world with his book On the Origin of Species , containing his theory of evolution by natural selection. His aim was to explain scientifically how the diverse species of plants and animals evolved over time from common ancestors. The constant struggle to exist was a survival of the fittest: Living things born with unusual but useful traits were more likely to find