Romanticism, according to Thomas Mann, was "the most revolutionary and most radical" movement of the "German spirit." Along with Judaism and the Enlightenment, it was one of Sigmund Freud's main sources of inspiration. The culture of the age of Johann Wolfgang von Goethe infused his childhood and youth, but also the whole of the nineteenth century, which was steeped in post-romantic elements such as Darwinism and the resurgence, in Germany, of Naturphilosophie, forgotten at the end of the century (Ellenberger, 1974). Freud's knowledge of certain romantic works of literature is attested by their presence in his library and by the 130 citations of them that appear in his writings.

If Freud was ambivalent with regard to romanticism, this may have to do with his disillusionment, during his youth, with the pan-Germanism (part of the post-romantic trend) of student circles in Vienna when he arrived at the university in 1873 and...