[Freud, Fliess, and the parenthood of psychoanalysis]

Although Freud attributed his self analytic interest and revived oedipal conflict to the death of his father, his biopsychological parenthood was also a significant determinant. Freud fathered six children, reactivating his own childhood and infantile unconscious conflicts and fantasies. His idealization of Fliess began with his own fatherhood, and the interruption of his exclusive relationship with his wife, and unconsciously his mother. His enlarging family evoked his mother's pregnancies and the birth of his seven siblings. Freud identified with his fertile parents and envied his sibling rivals. The experience of having five sisters in succession (after the death of his brother Julius) was of great importance. Freud's mother and sisters have been protectively veiled in his associations, with biographical and theoretical implications. Freud creatively analyzed himself, encountering and explaining the childhood past in his present life, as he became the father of psychoanalysis.