A cry of fire

Freud: The patient’s falling in love [with his analyst] in the transference [can be compared to] a cry of fire … raised during a theatrical performance. *

Freud: fear in a group is increased to enormous proportions ... when a fire breaks out in a theatre or a place of amusement. **

* SE 12, p. 162. Observations on Transference-Love, (1915).
** SE 18, p. 96. Group Psychology and The Analysis Of The Ego, (1921),

Wasted tickets

Is there anything at all linking Freud to the burned-out theatre? As Freud’s eldest sister, Anna Bernays, claimed in her memoir, Eine Wienerin in New York: die Erinnerungen der Schwester Sigmund Freuds [A Viennese woman in New York: the memories of Sigmund Freud's sister] (2004), she and her brother, Sigmund, had tickets for the second performance of the "Hoffman's Tales", at the Ring theatre, on the tragic evening. Oddly, as she claimed, instead of going to the theatre, and thus forfeiting their tickets, the siblings accepted an invitation to meet friends. (4) What an uncanny coincidence! The theatre burned down that evening, but the Freud siblings were safe at their friend’s home.
Would Freud allow two tickets for the performance to go to waste? Of course, not! Freud was a penny-pincher, if you have ever seen one; in fact, his obsession with the mammon was revealed in his statement: Money is a laughing gas for me, in his letter to Wilhelm of September 21, 1899. (5)
Ernest Jones, Freud's authorised biographer pointed out that Anna wasn't a reliable witness of her brother's affairs. Moreover, the idea that Freud would go together with his eldest sister anywhere, either to the theatre or to visit friends, is absurd. As Jones recounted, Freud never liked that sister. (6) The degree of dislike on Freud's part is even more apparent considering that, Freud did not go to Anna’s wedding, in October 1883 (7), only 2 years after the theatre fire.
Things appear rosier as one age, or maybe Anna wanted to appear closer to Freud than she was. Or maybe she was providing dear Sigmund with an alibi, assuming he needed one?

Watching the fire 

This is how she recounted how their evening allegedly ended: When we went home from our company late in the evening, we were astonished to see that it was glowing red behind the Augarten Bridge, and the answer to our question was that the Ringtheatre was on fire.
We were so grateful that by chance we had been saved from this terrible fate. We went to the burning theatre, stood there until late at night, and witnessed the most terrible scenes. (4)
Already, her account of the event appears unconvincing. No mention of who the friends were and where they lived, no details of the fire, no mention of the death of hundreds of people, just a perfunctory statement about terrible fate and terrible scenes. Nothing about her or Sigmund's reaction, either. It doesn't sound like she had witnessed the fire, either on her own or together with her brother.
On the other hand, a good question is whether she is right when claiming that her brother had had a ticket for a performance and whether he went to the theatre. And, if he did, how did he escape the fire? Significantly, Freud himself never mentioned his intended visit to the theatre on the night of the fire, but there's a hint, a quote about, a cry of fire … raised during a theatrical performance. (8)

Obituary

As Jones, recounted, in another of her recollections, Anna presented a different version of the tragic event.
Thus, In her obituary notice of her brother Anna told a story of how the two engaged couples had taken tickets for the Ringtheatre on the night of the tragic fire, December 8, 1881, when over six hundred of the audience lost their lives; but fortunately they had decided to spend the evening elsewhere.
Without a doubt, at least in part, the claim is false, since, as Jones pointed out, Freud had at that time not even met his future bride. (The couple had first met on an evening in April 1882,) (10) thus almost five months later.  As Jones pointed out, spinning tales about the theatre fire were common. To judge from the biographies of the time, however, he wrote, the sale of tickets on that fateful evening must have been enormous, since half Vienna claimed to have had the same lucky escape. (9)
Maybe - like any fiction writer, to make her recollections of her brother more exciting - Anna invented the whole tale. Or maybe not? Did Freud attend the performance on the day the theatre burned? There’s no clear indication of this in his writings or letters. On the other hand, as he explained on several occasions, he destroyed most of his chest of epistolary treasures from this period.

Destruction of incriminating (?) evidence

In the letter to Martha of April 28, 1885, four years after the theatre fire, Freud wrote: I have destroyed all my notes of the past fourteen years, as well as letters, scientific excerpts, and the manuscripts of my papers. As for letters, only those from the family have been spared. Yours, my darling, were never in danger. ... I couldn't have matured or died without worrying about who would get hold of those old papers. (10)
If there was something incriminating among Freud’s papers, Freud would have destroyed every single one of them. No doubt, the materials that went into the bonfire were of such a damaging, even criminal, character they weren’t supposed to see the light of day.
Had Freud set fire to the theatre, that kind of information would have been, without fail, mercilessly destroyed, its ashes spread by the wind. However, there are several hints in Freud's writings about his obsession with fire-setting.

Window jumping

As one of Freud's closest followers, Theodor Reik, recalled, his father claimed - true or false - that he had been to the Ringtheatre on that fateful night but had saved himself by jumping from a window. (11) No doubt, Jones was right, pointing out that on the fateful night half of the population of Vienna was in the theatre. Most were lying but not all, some bought the ticket and went to the theatre, some died and some survived. Was Freud among the latter? Or maybe it was he who set the theatre on fire?

The criminal returning to the scene of the crime?

As Paul Scagnelli, in his biography of Freud, Deadly Dr Freud: The Murder of Emanuel Freud and the Disappearance of John Freud (1994) pointed out, in 1886, Freud, exhibited bizarre behaviors while choosing his prior residences in Vienna.  What was bizarre about Freud’s choice of a family home?
Shortly, after his wedding, he was the first occupant of the dreaded House of Atonement apartment building on the site where 600 souls had been burned to death in a raging fire. 

Celebrating spectators' death?

As Scagnelli believed, his choice of the House of Atonement … allowed him to triumph over those 600 charred citizens of Vienna whom he hated and despised as part of the populace that had ridiculed his family in the 1860s due to their connections with criminality.

We will never know Freud's motivation to move into the dreaded location but maybe there was a different reason for Freud’s magic arrival in the Atonement House if he set it on fire. This kind of behaviour – Freud allegorically dancing on the graves of his victims – was repeated in other cases. 

Celebrating Nathan Weiss's death?

As Scagnelli observed, after the suicide of his “friend,” Nathan Weiss, he [Freud] had moved into the deceased’s apartments saying that he was not afraid of the man’s ghost, and then followed Weiss into a neurological career, as if “taking his place".
It wasn't, as if, Freud was taking Nathan's place, and was enjoying it.

 As Scagnelli explained, the expropriation of Nathan Weiss’s apartment was a magical act of triumph and revenge for Freud. (12) There's more: Nathan Weiss committed suicide because he was poisoned by Freud, but Scagnelli didn't know that. Thus, besides magic, there was a palpable criminal deed. 

Celebrating Theodor Meynert's death?

There’s at least one more case of this kind of magic behaviour on Freud’s part. As Freud recounted in the letter to his fiancé, after the death of his former mentor. Professor Theodor Meynert, whom Freud, in his deranged mind, turned into his enemy, Freud invaded the deceased's office and helped himself to books from his library.
This was yet another “magic” act of revenge on the enemy, who, as it appears, was poisoned with the same pathogenic agent as Weiss, and whom he, thus, conquered. 

In the possession of the field

All three magical events have two things in common. People dying, and Freud “dancing” the victory dance on the victims’ “grave”. Was he, in this way, thus. Celebrating his victory over his enemies?

Considering his penchant for arson, and his subsequent choice of the Atonement House for residence, the question is whether Freud also had anything to do with the fire that destroyed the Ringtheather killing hundreds of people. 

It is not uncommon for a criminal to return to the scene of the crime since:
For the organized nonsocial offender, the crime becomes—at least partially— a game. Such an offender will often return to the scene of the crime for the purpose of reliving the sensations he felt there. (13)
Could reliving the sensation he felt when committing the crimes have been Freud’s post-offense motivation for his bizarre behaviour?

(1) Jones, Ernest, The Life and Work of Sigmund Freud. Vol. 1. 1856-1900. The Formative Years and The Great Discoveries. (1953, p. 149).
(2) Dufresne, Todd, Killing Freud: Twentieth-Century Culture and the Death of Psychoanalysis, (2003, p. 7).
(3) Jones, (1953, p. 235).
(4) Freud-Bernays, Anna, Eine Wienerin in New Yor : die Erinnerungen der Schwester Sigmund Freuds. [A Viennese Woman In New York: The Memories of Sigmund Freud's Sister], (2004).
(5) Freud, Sigmund, The Complete Letters of Sigmund Freud to Wilhelm Fliess 1887–1904, (1985, p. 374).
(6) Jones, (1953, p. 10).
(7) Jones, (1953, p. 119).
(8) SE 12, p. 162.
(9) Jones, (1953, p. 103).
(10) Freud, Sigmund, The Letters of Sigmund Freud, (1960, op. 140-141).
(11) Reik, Theodor, The Search Within: The Inner Experiences of a Psychoanalyst, (1956, p. 443).
(12) Scagnelli, Paul, Deadly Dr Freud: The Murder of Emanuel Freud and the Disappearance of John Freud, (1994, p. 221).
(13) Holmes, Ronald M. &-Holmes, Stephen T., Profiling Violent Crimes: An Investigative Tool, 2nd edition, (1996, p. 54).