“The Scenes Themselves Which Lie at the Bottom of the Story:” Julius, Circumcision, and the Castration Complex

I know from my own experience that … psychic state … typical of someone who dares to do something new and relies on his confidence and who, by taking a wrong route, probably discovers something original, but far less than he had anticipated (Letter to Fliess: August 20, 1898; Masson, 1985, p. 323).

Freud posited the castration complex as central to understanding human development. As such, his writings are replete with emphasis on the importance of the penis and its destiny. One might wonder about the source of such penile attention, and the role Freud's early environment might have played in contributing to it. Depending on how one reads his work, certainly his description of how a child interprets and experiences the threat of castration might belie much of his own developmental history. As I considered this and pursued what is known of his early history, I became increasingly drawn to a particular traumatic 6 month period in his early life. In this paper, then, I focus on Freud's early life and suggest that he was significantly traumatized by the birth, circumcision, and death of his brother Julius. I assert that Freud's inability to retrieve and analyze that trauma provided the unconscious motivation for his conceptualizing the castration complex, and professing its cen-trality in human development. To lend support to my view, I first examine Freud's early childhood environment. I then review evidence