Freud's Early Travels1

The theme I have chosen for this paper has more than one source of interest. In the years between the ages of 20 and 40 Freud did far more travelling and sightseeing than was customary among young doctors in his position, especially at that time. Moreover, he enjoyed such experiences with an extraordinary gusto. Freud's capacity for keen enjoyment and also his sense of beauty were, contrary to some ideas that have been expressed of him, very highly developed. This enjoyment was partly visual and partly intellectual. He was always exhilarated by a lovely landscape or town, by beautiful architecture, and to a lesser extent painting. His keen powers of observation, and the minute attention he would devote to such objects, is well illustrated in his well-known studies of Leonardo and Michel Angelo's Moses. They also illustrate the intellectual interest that accompanied the pleasure in observing. This interest was always directed, like most of his interests, towards the past, which was one reason why Italy with its classical remains attracted him so powerfully. We shall presently see, however, that all these enjoyments had a deeper and more personal significance than their external sources in the world of reality.

Freud had a divided attitude, one common enough, towards the differing attractions of the South and North of Europe, one corresponding to the contrast between the pleasure and the reality principles respectively. On the one hand there were the undeniable virtues of the North. In his twenties England was the land of his dreams, which he first visited when he was 19. It was its tolerance, with its sense of fair play and justice, that drew him towards it, and perhaps above all the fact that Jews led a freer life there than elsewhere. His half-brother Emmanuel, whom he loved throughout his life, had gone to live there just when his father had dragged the young boy Freud to the poverty and persecutions of Vienna, a fact he never ceased to resent. Then i