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in which are related the picaresque adventures of the ingenious hidalgo Don Cipion Freud in the city of Seville: with further comments on the Academia Castellana and Miguel de Cervantes Saavedra
“When I was a young student, the desire to read the immortal Don Quixote in the original of Cervantes led me to learn, untaught, the lovely Castilian tongue”1 (Freud, 1923, p. 289). It was in these proud words that Freud recalled in 1923 how, more than five decades earlier, he had, “sin maestros,” embarked on his first independent intellectual exploration. The self-proclaimed conquistador of the terrae incognitae of the mind took his maiden voyage in the wake of Miguel de Cervantes Saavedra; like his admired predecessor, Columbus, he reached safe harbor at Seville. In this essay, we shall attempt to trace the route of this journey and to make an inventory of the treasures he brought back from this New World.
The deep personal significance that Don Quixote had for Freud did not escape the attention of Ernest Jones (1953, PP. 174–175). It could hardly be a coincidence that Freud returned to this book as soon as the departure of his fiancée's family from Vienna separated him from his beloved Martha. Moreover, he urged his prissily reluctant bride-to-be to share his preoccupation: “But do finish Don Quixote,” he exhorted her on September 8, 1883. He had sent her a copy while he was once more immersing himself in the adventures of the hero of his mid-adolescence: “While in the midst