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Sigmund Freud was convinced that during his early years his family lived in a state of poverty. In a letter of Fliess in 1899 he wrote,
My mood also depends very strongly on my earnings. Money is laughing gas for me. I know from my youth that once the wild horses of the pampas have been lassoed, they retain a certain anxiousness for life. Thus I came to know the helplessness of poverty and continually fear it. You will see that my style will improve and my ideas will be more correct if this city provides me with an ample livelihood. (Masson, 1985, p. 374; italics added)
An oil painting of the Freud children was painted in 1868. About it Freud said, “The painter has graciously overlooked the holes in the soles of my shoes” (Freud, 1983, p. 15). This was thought by his son Martin to refer to the poverty of his youth.
In Freud's Autobiographical Study, he writes, “Although we lived in very limited circumstances [in Vienna], my father insisted that, in my choice of profession, I should follow my own inclinations alone” (Freud, 1925). He decided to become a medical student even though he did not “feel any particular predilection for the career of a doctor.”
He became engaged to Martha Bernays in 1882 and required an adequate income to marry her. In his autobiography, he describes his situation as follows,
The turning-point came in 1882, when my teacher, for whom I felt the highest possible esteem, corrected by father's generous improvidence by strongly advising me, in view of my bad financial position, to abandon my theoretical career. (Freud, 1925, p. 10; italics added)
It was Ernst Brucke who advised Freud to enter into clinical medicine. There he could earn money and marry his fiancée without too long a delay. Freud's phrase, his “father's generous improvidence” is an apparent oxymoron. To be improvident is to not foresee the