Freud's “Déjà Vu” on the Acropolis*

It is not without hesitation and some notable, if understandable delay that psychoanalysts have embarked on a study of Freud's personal life. Such studies have begun to appear, in an increasing number, after the Freud Centennial in 1956 and the publication of Jones' biography. The Acropolis episode, in particular, is itself an anniversary study, and has received considerable attention in the years following the Freud anniversary. To mention only a few authors from our own New York analyltic audience who, in recent years, have dealt with the experience, I wish to name Harrison, Kanzer, Spiegel, Stamm and, of course, tonight's presentation by Harry Slochower in its deep understanding and scholarly thoroughness. Slochower points to the “dramatic-poetic” quality of Freud's portrayal of the Acropolis experience and describes it as “a literary gem.” It seems to me that Slochower himself deserves some of this acknowledgment for the poetic and illuminating attributes of his own presentation.

To turn to the anniversary aspects of Freud's Open Letter to Romain Rolland, Slochower reminds us that the Letter was written on the occasion of Rolland's 70th birthday, and when Freud had reached the proverbial Biblical age of 80. Since, in a so-called anniversary reaction, the quality of the original experience is unconsciously retained in a focal and affective state “close to its original one and relatively immune to the passage of time” (G. Pollock), I wish to expand on Slochower's observations along two pathways. In 1936, Freud's life-journey was approaching its terminal point, and feeling that “his death was near,” the letter to Rolland was in the nature of “a look backwards toward veiled beginnings” (Slochower). Via Freud's journey to the Acropolis in 1904, Slochower takes us back to Freud's early life and to what the young child had observed “vaguely and mistily,” but, in concretu, travelling with the