Starting from the mid-1890s, Freud assumed that the trauma whose memory was repressed by neurotics was of a sexual nature. More specifically, he claimed to obtain from his patients’ memories of sexual abuse suffered in early childhood at the hands of an adult pervert, most of the time the father. In late 1897, he abandoned this “seduction theory,” having realized, he said, that his patients’ memories were in fact fantasies expressing an infantile sexual wish to be fondled by a parent. This reversal, which marks the beginning of Freud’s theories about infantile perverse sexuality and the Oedipus complex, was due to his adoption of his friend Wilhelm Fliess’ speculations regarding biorythms, themselves based on Ernst Haeckel’s “biogenetic law”: the individual development (ontogenesis) of an organism recapitulates the development of the species (phylogenesis). Hence Freud’s theory of the various stages (oral, anal, phallic, etc.) of libidinal development, which was not based, as he claimed in the “Little Hans” case, on an empirical investigation of children’s sexuality but on purely speculative (and since then debunked) biological assumptions.

Books focusing on Sigmund Freud are voluminous; dedicated scholars have spent their lives combing through every detail of his life and contributions, and controversies surrounding his relationships with his followers, colleagues, and patients. However, there has been very little focus on his addiction to cocaine. Even less attention has been paid to his dependence to cigars, which persisted despite the development of oral cancer and numerous surgeries. This chapter focuses on his life vis-à-vis these highly addictive and dangerous substances, discussing their significance in the context of his personality, childhood experiences, and career trajectories. The main purpose of the chapter is to use this dimension of his life to highlight his remarkable strength as well as his vulnerability, and to demonstrate that suffering (childhood adversities and career disappointments) often go hand in hand with unyielding striving leading to remarkable achievements.