The Freud & Martha Corespondence

The International Journal of
Int J Psychoanal (2013) 94:863935 doi: 10.1111/1745-8315.12118
Die Brautbriefe: The Freud and Martha correspondence*

Riccardo Steiner
12a Belsize Lane, London, UK ricSt1945@aol.com
Sigmund Freud and Martha Bernays Die Brautbriefe Band 1. Sei mein, wie Ich mirs denke. Juni 1882Juli 1883 Herausgegeben von Gerhard Fichtner, Ilse Grubrich-Simitis und Albrecht ller Hirschmu S. Fischer Verlag, Frankfurt am Main, 2011 The Bridal Letters Vol. 1. Be mine as I want you. June 1882July 1883 ller Edited by Gerhard Fichtner, Ilse Grubrich-Simitis and Albrecht Hirschmu S. Fischer Verlag, Frankfurt am Main, 2011
Through our combined memories: Die Brautbriefe, Anna Freud, Ernest Jones, and the Bernfelds
The most beautiful letters, one could write a book about them The whole series makes a tremendous love epic. Yes, he was very passionate and expresses the most tumultuous emotions in the pithiest language Martha comes out of the letters excellently but Freud was very neurotic. (Letter from Jones to Siegfried Bernfeld, 9 May 195229 June 1952)
Saved from confiscation and probable destruction by the Nazis after the occupation of Austria in 1938, the Brautbriefe are the letters that Sigmund Freud and Martha Bernays exchanged from June 1882 and May 1886, during the long and painful period of their engagement. The Brautbriefe are part of a wider collection of personal and official letters, manuscripts, and documents related to the life and work of Freud and his relatives, friends, colleagues and acquaintances. Freud and his family managed to bring the collection to London in 1938, together with a large and substantial part of Freuds library and precious collection of antiquities. For more than ten years the letters between Freud and Martha have remained carefully protected by Freuds family, held at 20 Maresfield Gardens, London NW3.
*For J. Starobinski Copyright 2013 Institute of Psychoanalysis Published by John Wiley & Sons Ltd, 9600 Garsington Road, Oxford, OX4 2DQ, UK and 350 Main Street, Malden, MA 02148, USA on behalf of the Institute of Psychoanalysis
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According to E. Jones (1956, vol. 1, p. 109), following her husbands death in 1939, Martha Bernays wanted to do what her young fianc e had famously asked her to do destroy them.1 She desisted only at her childrens request. It was Jones who in 1945 already had in mind to write a sort of biography of Freud (Steiner, 2000); Jones was the first for many years and one of the few to have access to the Brautbriefe. Towards the end of the 1940s Jones had been appointed as Freuds official biographer, after much doubt and hesitation, by Anna Freud in consultation with her family and some of her closest friends who were in London or who had emigrated to the USA, such as E. Kris and his wife, M. Schur, K. Eissler in New York, and M. Bonaparte in Paris, to mention just a few (Steiner, 2000). Joness characteristic harshness (YoungBruehl, 1988, pp. 306, 347) and his role in protecting M. Klein before and after the arrival of the Viennese in England could not be easily forgotten by Anna. And yet Jones had contributed so much in saving Annas father and family and friends. This, together with the fact that in the same years J. Strachey, with the help of Jones but also in constant consultation with Anna, had started the Standard Edition, played its part in persuading Anna of Joness loyalty to her father (Steiner, 1995, 2000). During the first months of 1952, perhaps not by chance a few months after the death of her mother, Martha, on 2 November 1951, Anna Freud announced to Jones that she and her family had discussed the possibility of allowing him to read and use the Brautbriefe (YoungBruehl, 1988, pp. 30610; Behling, 2005, p. 162). Helping Jones was not an easy task for Anna, particularly in this case. She wanted to have total control over Joness writings but, at a more personal level, she had to face moments of constant and at times disturbing emotions in searching through those documents, stored but disorganized in dozens of boxes at Maresfield Gardens; she would do this in the evenings or during the time she could spare from the long hours of clinical and administrative work at the Hampstead Clinics. Those documents reminded her of so many private moments of her fathers and mothers and her own life in Vienna, her childhood and youth with them and her family, now lost forever. To complicate this search, Anna experienced a sort of chronic depression for the loss of her father which tormented her for years (YoungBruehl, 1988, pp. 286317). And one should not forget the difficulties Anna and the Viennese still had to face in their work in London in spite of the conclusion of the so-called FreudKlein Controversies in 194245 (King and Steiner, 1992). In the case of the Brautbriefe, those personal documents went even further back to a period in which Anna had not yet been born and did not know her father, which made her feel even more nostalgic and in some ways depressed:
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Freud to Martha, 28 April 1885; Freud, 1961, pp. 1523. Copyright 2013 Institute of Psychoanalysis
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Die Brautbriefe: The Freud and Martha correspondence Today my fathers death has his 13th anniversary and I still wish I had known him at the time of the Brautbriefe. At least I shall meet him through the medium of your work. (Anna to Jones, 23 September 1952)2
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The search for the Brautbriefe had been rather clumsy and the results unexpected at times. Consider the letter dated 24 May 1952 from Anna to Jones:
There are hundreds of additional letters which I found and packed for you just now from 188286 my fathers and my mothers indeed. (Anna to Jones, 24 March 1952)
Anna added: I do not know how you will cope with them now, probably alluding both to the fact that Jones had nearly finished writing the first volume of the biography and to the pressure that all this new and so fascinating material put on him.3 A few months later Anna told Jones that she had also found a booklet entitled Geheim- Chronik [Secret Chronicle], which she could not transcribe but she wanted to be sure that it could not be seen except by you (Anna to Jones, 3 November 1952).4 It had therefore not been easy for Anna and her family to decide whether to allow Jones to read and use the Brautbriefe. Indeed, if one sought an emblematic example of the complex reasons which motivated Annas need for total control over the way Jones was writing his biography of Freud, one could find it in these letters. Aside from Annas personal reasons, there was a cultural and in some ways also political strategy: the need to create and transmit to the psychoanalytical movement and the general public a certain image of Freud, his life and work, that Anna and her friends thought represented his
See also the moving letter from Anna to Jones dated 31 January 1954 (Steiner, 2000). The letters were frantically transcribed and translated for Jones by his wife Kitty, who had great difficulty at the time in deciphering Freuds shadow-Gothic handwriting (Jones to Bernfeld, 26 June 1952); Freud himself comments on his difficult-to-read handwriting in a letter to Martha (15 August 1882; Fichtner et al., 2011, p. 87). The letters were sent to Jones by Anna in instalments. There is an amusing series of letters from Jones to Bernfeld in which he describes all this (Jones to Bernfeld, 26 June 1952 and 3 August 1952). According to Jones, there were between 1,700 and 2,000 letters. In reality, there are all together 1,539 (Fichtner et al., 2011, p. 58). According to T. Roberts (Grubrich-Simitis, Einfu hrung, in Fichtner et al., 2011, p. 14), Jones made use of and quoted more or less 213 Brautbriefe in his biography. I still remember how, during the commemoration for the centenary of the birth of Jones in 1979 at the British Psychoanalytic Society, Anna ironically described the way she and her family helped Jones, sending him documents and letters by hand, by post or bringing them to him during their visits to Joness retirement cottage at Elsted in Sussex. Anna and her family did not care very much about security!!! All this made it very difficult for Anna to trace and get back all those precious original letters and documents later on (Freud A, 1979).
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Just imagine last night, still searching for letters, I found the Geheim-Chronik. A small black booklet, begun on 25 January 1883, ended 21 September 1886. There are only 30 pages written in it, in alternation, wrote Anna to Jones on 3 November 1952. See Fichtner et al., 2011, pp. 53142, for the edited transcription. The Geheim-Chronik was a sort of secret diary written alternately by Freud and Martha, in which they commented on some of the main events during their engagement. Int J Psychoanal (2013) 94
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true image5; this strategy meant creating a biographical historiography, which used the available documents in a rather artisanal, personal, censured and more than once dogmatic and ideological way. A biographical historiography, to use Halbwachss felicitous definition, based on the method of the collective memories of those who had personally known Freud as the main criterion of truth (Steiner, 2000), would have helped to preserve what they thought to be the true and idealized image of Freud as a person and as the hero of psychoanalysis against all sorts of threats, the dangerous mounting criticisms, and what they considered to be incorrect and heretical views concerning psychoanalysis in those years (Steiner, 2000). Anna, her family and her most intimate friends had therefore tried to create a sort of cultural quarantine line around Freud, his personal life and his work.6 Aside from certain discredited attempts to write Freuds biography when he was still alive (just think of Wittels, 1924), what had disturbed and worried Anna and her friends towards the end of the 1940s was Ludwigs (1946) book and, above all, Puners (1947) attempt at a biography of Freud (Steiner, 2000). But now there was also constant pressure on Anna and her friends from all sorts of other researchers wanting to write something about her father, and demanding information and documents (Young-Bruehl, 1988, pp. 306 7). Just think of what Anna wrote concerning E. Homburger Erikson, a former prot eg e of hers who had now emigrated to America: I have read one paper by Erik Homburger [Erikson] which literally turn my stomach (Anna to Jones, 25 November 1952). Anna was referring to Eriksons analysis of Freuds Irma dream. And consider what she wrote in the same revealing letter to Jones:
I look forward to your book stopping all the impossible attempts at biographies of my father in the air (and on paper).
The extremely well-documented and pioneering historical work on the earliest years of Freuds life and scientific career written by the Bernfelds (1949, 1944, 1981[1944]), Annas longstanding friends from Vienna and Berlin who emigrated to San Francisco in the late 1930s, was one that Anna had supported at the beginning despite Joness opposition! (YoungBruehl, 1988, p. 347). But it too had aroused Annas anxiety and disapproval. It is worth noting that Jones went on to use and at times plagiarize the
To a certain extent that was also the belief of their British and English colleagues. E. Jones and J. Strachey were both convinced that only those who had known Freud could, for instance, truthfully translate his work into English (Steiner, 1987), although in their correspondence of the late 1940s and early 1950s in spite of what they officially wrote to Anna they expressed their personal criticisms and reservations as far as the FreudFliess correspondence, heavily cut and controlled by Anna and E. Kris, was concerned (Masson, 1985; Steiner, 1995). It is important to remember that, during her commemoration of Joness work as a biographer in 1979 in the speech given at the British Psychoanalytic Society, Anna insisted on Joness model of biography as factual and that his aim had been to adhere strictly to the truth (Freud A, 1979; Steiner, 2000)!! 6 One should not forget that it was during those years that K. Eissler, helped by generous American private donors, had started the Freud Archives which he directed and controlled, for better or for worse, for years! in New York. A huge number of Freuds letters, manuscripts and documents concerning him and his followers are now at the Library of Congress in Washington, DC. Int J Psychoanal (2013) 94 Copyright 2013 Institute of Psychoanalysis
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Die Brautbriefe: The Freud and Martha correspondence
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Bernfelds work in the first volume of his biography of Freud (GrubrichSimitis, 1981; Steiner, 2000). But what had most disturbed Anna were the psychoanalytic interpretations of the life of the young Freud, in particular those made by Suzanne Cassirer Bernfeld, which in a letter to Jones dated 15 November 1950 Anna described as more phantasy than reality. Jones sensed that the Bernfelds were falling out of favour and that Anna now preferred his work. It is not so difficult therefore to understand Annas and her familys emotions and uncertainties in deciding whether to allow Jones to publish the Brautbriefe. Due to the personal and at times extremely delicate nature of the contents of the Brautbriefe, Jones had to demonstrate and prove his loyalty to Freuds family. He had to moderate the inevitable temptation to use psychoanalysis to psychoanalyse Freud. The Brautbriefe were a potential gold mine for this type of interpretation. It is impossible here to discuss in detail the historiographical methodology adopted by Jones in writing his biography, which has to be put in the cultural but also socio-political context of the biographies of great men of science, arts and politics written in those years, and the transformations that this kind of wenthal, historiographical genre was undergoing (see Kracauer, 1977[1933]; Lo 1984; Batchelor, 1995; Holmes, 1995; Backscheider, 2001; Steiner, 2000, 2001a; Tridgell, 2004). One would have to consider in particular the longstanding British empirical tradition of writing biographies (Steiner, 2000). Suffice to say here that Jones seemed to have chosen a sort of middle way between, on the one hand, the iconic 18th century approach to biography, based on facts and epitomized by The Life of Samuel Johnson written by Boswell (179192) who, like Jones, personally knew his biographee (Boswell and Hibbert, 1986 [1791]). And on the other, a biographical approach which could make use of the new vistas of psychoanalysis in describing characters and motivations. However, because of his role as Freuds appointed official biographer, Jones had to steer clear of avant-garde iconoclasm in his pursuit of the hidden truth of his biographee. Just remember L Stracheys pioneering Elizabeth and Essex (1925) Holroyd (1981) (Strachey, Holroyd 1981). One has to say that making use of his sophisticated and over the years wellmarinated diplomacy, Jones tried more than once to defend his autonomy as a biographer and his wish to pursue the full truth. He recalled to Anna her fathers ruthless integrity and aversion to compromise in his work, and he even quoted Cromwells (one of Freuds heroes) injunction to his portrait painter Paint me warts and all (Jones to Anna, 28 November 1951). Yet, in the case of the Brautbriefe, things were more complicated and charged with all sorts of emotions. Jones had to walk a tightrope. It was not the first time that Anna and her family had sat together at home, or with Jones, and through our combined memories (Anna to Jones, 31 July 1951) tried to answer Joness endless queries about the early years of Freuds life and work. But this time Anna and her family had needed more than one family meeting to decide whether to allow Jones to read and use the Brautbriefe, with the guarantee that he would be the only one to have the right to publish them. Referring to those letters, on 19 March 1952 Anna wrote to Jones:
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On 28 March 1952 Jones wrote back to Anna. After cautiously going through the various possible solutions to dealing with the Brautbriefe, including destroying them, which would be an unforgivable crime, with characteristic rhetoric he invited Anna to let me go through them and then preserve them. I need hardly say that I should not think of quoting any passage without first submitting it to you. A few days later, Jones declared to Anna:
I appreciate fully your intellectual Yes and your emotional No and I congratulate you on what I am quite sure is the right outcome. No one knew better than your father how emotions hold up reason, but he had great faith in its being the ultimate victor. (Jones to Anna, 1 April 1952)
It was Freuds son, Ernst Freud who incidentally later on did not seem hrung, in so enthusiastic about Joness biography (Grubrich-Simitis, Einfu Fichtner et al., 2011, pp. 1314) who managed to overcome the resistance of Anna and her other siblings. The fears felt by Anna and the majority of her family with regard to the Brautbriefe suddenly intensified. And later, Anna never allowed Jones to use her personal correspondence with her father directly; instead, she distilled some information from it for Jones, because it was too personal.8 Indeed, Annas sense of discretion, the particular relationship she had with her father, along with her fear of violating the sancta sanctorum of the intimacy between her young father and her mother (with whom she did not have an easy relationship) (Young-Bruehl, 1998, pp. 30210; Behling, 2005, pp. 12930, 160), meant that Anna did not even allow herself to read some of those Brautbriefe!9 The Brautbriefe instilled in her an enormous longing for the past and on top of the remote past, which has never been my own, she told Jones, adding:
I looked into one or two and I realize now I cannot read them for objective purposes you will read them better than me as a more detached reader.
Later on Anna read the correspondence when she was involved in the German translation of Joness biography (see the letter from Anna to Jones dated 30 August 1956; Steiner, 2000). Jones not only used diplomacy to reassure Anna about the Brautbriefe, in a rather seductive way, he also tried to recall how attracted he had been to
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See also the letter from Anna to Jones dated 30 March 1952. See, for instance, the letter from Anna to Jones dated 23 February 1954 (Steiner, 2000). See the letter from Anna to Jones dated 8 April 1952. Copyright 2013 Institute of Psychoanalysis
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her in the past, concluding: I have always loved you in quite an honest fashion (Jones to Anna, 5 July 1956); Jones reminded Anna of his courtship of her when on her first trip to England in 1914 when she was very young and attractive. Incidentally, this courtship had greatly worried Freud, who knew of Joness past as a womanizer (S. Freud to Jones, 22 July 1914; Paskaukas, 1993, p. 294). Since Anna had not allowed Jones access to her correspondence with her father, Jones was unaware of Freuds letter to Anna, dated 16 July 1914, in which Freud strongly warned his 18 year-old against Joness courtship, due to his roughness, the unpredictability of his manners and behaviour, his difficult upbringing and his age; at 35, he was too old for Anna (Meyer-Palmedo, 2006, p. 138). As a result of the way Jones approached the letters walking on eggshells in order not to upset Anna and her family the Brautbriefe had managed to restore and reinforce the not always easy friendship between Jones and Freuds family, instilling some tenderness too. At one point, after having read the second chapter of the first volume of his biography of Freud in which, one should not forget, the Brautbriefe and references to them occupy more than three chapters Anna even confessed to Jones that reading it made her frequently dream of her father. In a letter to Jones dated 18 September 1956, Anna said:
I have lived in and with your book all these weeks It does the most extraordinary things to me, especially to my dreams. I dream of apartments of the past and happenings which never existed or took place I believe I am really dreaming about my fathers past and not of mine. Like most children I have always been jealous of his past that I did not share your descriptions bring it home to me what a long and full life he had before my time, that I really only appear somewhere in the middle as a very insignificant item
Anna never replied to Joness mention of his courtship. But a few months later, in a letter dated 9 January 1954, Anna wrote to say that she had had a dream about Jones in which they had been trying together to understand a passage of her fathers work that was in Latin mirabile dictu. One cannot therefore deny that the Brautbriefe had mobilized all sorts of mirabilia, all sorts of emotions between Anna and Jones (and I leave it to those who passionately apply psychoanalysis even to the life of its pioneers to interpret them). This is not surprising when one thinks of the radiant power of passion that Freud and the young Martha expressed in these letters. However, aside from all those personal feelings and confessions, one can also detect the imposing, coercive strength of the cultural and political strategy of Anna and the Viennese, as far as the Brautbriefe were concerned. Was it indeed worth openly circulating so many of the intimate details of the lives, characters and feelings of the young Freud and Martha, their difficult personal relationship and sexual frustrations during the long years of their engagement, as well as the difficulties and even financial misunderstandings between the two families (Jones, 1956, pp. 14862)? And what about all the uncertainties and complex changes in Freuds scientific and professional career? The letters also include many references to Minna Marthas sister
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who had died in 1941 after living with Freud and Martha in Vienna following the first few years of their marriage. Freud had been in correspondence with Minna from the first months of his engagement with Martha. By the way, the supposed love relationship between Freud and Minna later has become one of the preferred hunting-grounds for the sleuths of the scandalistic and revisionistic historiographies on Freud who also draw on the Brautbriefe.10 The familys uncertainty about publishing the letters was intensified by the fact that neither Anna nor her brothers and sisters had been alive at the time of the events. Anna, for instance, became much more certain regarding what she could remember about her father when she had to refer to facts concerning his life since she was a child (Steiner, 2000). But what would happen if someone misused all that personal and revealing information and tried to establish a distorted, reductive, denigrating link between Freuds troubled life during his engagement with Martha and his achievements as a psychoanalyst? Would someone, as Anna suggested to Jones in a letter dated 7 November 1951, exaggerate what even Jones (always ready to pathologize everybody) called Freuds neurosis?11 It is not by chance that what Jones had written to Bernfeld about Freud being very neurotic (Jones to Bernfeld, 29 June 1952) never appeared in this format in Joness first volume of Freuds biography. How would one establish the boundaries between the truth and the deliberate distortions and exaggerations? Obviously, the attempt to use the personal pathology of any famous figure in order to try to denigrate her or his achievements is not a problem that only concerns psychoanalysis, although the use of psychoanalysis to write so-called pathographies of artists, writers and scientists is perhaps the inevitable result of the discoveries of psychoanalysis itself. But, due to the issues Freud dealt with, and some of the normative implications present in his conclusions concerning sexuality, mental sanity and mental pathology, the whole matter was very complex indeed. The danger lay in furnishing further ammunition to those attempting to denigrate both Freud, as a person, and psychoanalysis attempts which have been ongoing since before the 1940s and 1950s.12 In the letters, starting with the year 1884, there are numerous references to one of the thorniest moments of Freuds pre-psychoanalytic career, namely his experiments with and personal use of cocaine. The letters were therefore seen as potentially extremely dangerous if misused. Jones had to play all his diplomatic cards, but also accept Annas potential veto, as far as those aspects of the letters were concerned. Indeed, at the beginning of
10 See, for instance, Swales (1982), Gay (1989a, pp. 7523; 1989b; 2006, in Blumenthal, 2006), Roazen ller (2007) to Maciejewskis paper and the (1993), Maciejewski (2006), as well as the reply of Hirschmu other articles published in the 2007 edition of American Imago. 11 See, for example, what Anna wrote to Jones on 7 December 1951: I understand the biographers difficulties with reference to neurosis [of course referring also to her father]. People seem to overdo it at the moment. She suggested that Jones should read an article published by E. Buxbaum on this subject in the Menninger Bulletin, and the comments and responses to it by Suzanne Cassirer Bernfeld. 12 Consider, for example, what Anna wrote to Jones concerning the reviews of the first volume of his biography of Freud: she was reading carefully when she mentioned the ambivalence of various reviewers very amazing, very interesting, very disappointing. It shows how much of the former dislike of psycho-analysis is alive still, in spite of the apparent acceptance (Anna to Jones, 26 September 1956).
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September 1952 Anna had received a paper by the Bernfelds on the topic of Freud and his use of cocaine, which W. Hoffer, the editor of the International Journal of Psychoanalysis, sent on to her. It was Jones who had sent the Bernfelds paper to the International Journal. Anna was extremely anxious about the Bernfelds claims about her fathers experiments, his use of cocaine and the famous Fleischl von Markow episode. And the Bernfelds had not even had access to the Brautbriefe! Anna was unaware of what Jones had tantalizingly written to the Bernfelds concerning these issues. Something needed to be done to stop the Bernfelds. So Anna put pressure on Jones to make sure that their paper would not be published in its original form in the International Journal of Psychoanalysis. She wrote to Jones on 19 September 1952 to express her view:
I did not like the paper at all except for the facts, which are very interesting. But her interpretations [Anna was referring to Suzanne Cassirer Bernfeld] with which the facts are intermingled are loose, wrong and sometimes ridiculous. Please do not let him [Bernfeld] publish it in this form. After all, you know how all these things really happened, and it should be your role to silence the other biographers, who have to invent half of their facts. (Italics added)
The paper was never published in the International Journal of Psychoanalysis (Steiner, 2000). It is impossible to go into all the details here about the correspondence between Jones and the Bernfelds during those months. Yet those details (Steiner, 2000) show that labyrinthine tricks, difficulties, inevitable compromises and intellectual sufferance of those who did and did not have access to the documents characterize the first attempts at the historiography of Freud and psychoanalysis during the early 1950s. Joness ambiguity, his well-known capacity to play double games with people and his tantalizing attitude towards others like the Bernfelds speak for themselves. On the one hand, Jones seemed to want to help the Bernfelds get more information concerning what they wanted to know about the whole story of Freuds use of cocaine. On the other hand, he had at the same time to face Anna Already reneging on his promise to Anna, on 24 April 1952 Jones wrote to S. Bernfeld:
The Brautbriefe certainly reveal a different Freud from what is otherwise known [] They all ought to be published some day in the future and I will fight hard to prevent them from being destroyed!!
A few months later when Anna read the cocaine episode, as she called it, in the manuscript of the first volume of Joness biography, she wrote to Jones:
The medical career is excellent in the way it creates the picture of hard work, deprivations and search. The Cocaine Episode, of course, is very different in its atmosphere of storm. You make it seem very plausible, even to me, to whom this
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As we have seen, at some points we can detect Joness resentment towards Anna and her control to which he had to submit. One is reminded of Jones and Stracheys criticism of Anna and Kriss censorship when they wrote to each other about the censored edition of the FreudFliess correspondence in 194950 (Steiner, 1995). On 15 April 1952, Jones wrote to S. Bernfeld:
You do not reckon with the petitions and the secrecy of the family the decision to let me see the letters was reached only after heartbreaking discussions and after exacting all sorts of pledges from me.
Jones even went so far as to imply that Anna could destroy the Brautbriefe (24 April 1952, and see also Bernfeld to Jones, 31 December 1952).13 In a moment of indiscretion, on 19 May 1952, Jones wrote to the Bernfelds, stating that in the letters: Freud sends cocaine right and left. The latest is to Martha to bring a blossom to her cheek. Jones thereby further aroused the enormous curiosity of Freuds two old friends who had landed in San Francisco so far away from Vienna, London and those precious documents! But perhaps the statement that condenses all I want to stress about the characteristics of this historiography, still so partial and censored even as far as the Brautbriefe are concerned, is to be found in Joness letter to S. Bernfeld on 28 April 1952:
And I am afraid Freud took more cocaine than he should have, although I am not mentioning that. (Italics added)
In the end, Jones won Annas praise by intervening in the matter of the manuscript that Bernfeld sent to the International Journal of Psychoanalysis. Probably, it was the way he handled the cocaine episode that reinforced his friendship with Anna and her trust in him. It is obvious that Jones wanted besides reaching a deeper identification with Freud to be definitively accepted in the inner circle of Freuds family and friends, from which he had felt rather excluded in the past (Steiner, 2000). Just consider Annas last statement in a letter to Jones, dated 5 November 1952:
I wonder how you succeed in making your accounts plausible, whereas in the hands of Suse Bernfeld the story becomes offensive.
But I do not think I have to stress further the price Jones had to pay for being so plausible.
13 Bernfeld wrote, in a letter to Jones dated 31 December 1952, that he hoped Jones could persuade the Freud family to print all the Brautbriefe [] I think they would rate a unique place amongst the correspondence of the great man.
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The Bernfelds? Just read the following excerpt from Siegfried Bernfelds moving letter, written when he was ill and recovering from a heart attack a few months before he died. Ignoring what Jones had done with his manuscript, and yet still enormously curious about the young Freud, his early life and career, and full of nostalgia for that Vienna where he had also studied and lived, Siegfried Bernfeld begged Jones (who was also getting old, unwell, and aware of his impending death and the enormous task of finishing his work), to send him the original manuscript of his biography of Freud, which contained references to the Brautbriefe which Jones then had to cross out:
I feel that every line which you cross out should be preserved at least in my files. I hate the idea that in a few months those Brautbriefe will go back to Anna Freud and remain inaccessible for a long time. (S. Bernfeld to Jones, 3 March 1956)
No wonder therefore that Jones was so enthusiastic about the Brautbriefe. In a letter he wrote to Siegfried Bernfeld, dated 3 August 1952, he described them as a treasure trove of the richest material in all directions: works, relationships, ideas, passions, hopes, fears. Even the extremely cautious, diplomatic and reserved K. Eissler, who was nevertheless very helpful to Jones, wanted the Brautbriefe to be microfilmed because of their importance and the danger that they could be destroyed.14 After the death of Anna Freud, the Brautbriefe would eventually reach the Freud Archives in New York and they were deposited at the Library of the Congress in Washington, DC. In the meantime, the era of the personal witnesses, the historiography of Freud, the history of psychoanalysis in statu nascendi in which the Brautbriefe played such an important part, and the attempts to create a mythical image of Freud based on all sorts of personal and ideological reasons, gradually faded away on both sides of the Atlantic. This was due to the passing away of the older generation of Austrian emigr e analysts who had a nostalgic loyalty to a certain image of Freud and tried to over-protect his private and public life (just think of Eisslers control of the Archives in Washington, DC); the shift was also due to changes in the broader cultural and socio-political context in which post-Freudian psychoanalysis started to develop that inevitably affected the writing of biographies and psychoanalytic historiography.
The 2011 Brautbriefe edition

Martha Bernays made her appearance at last Martha Bernays tritt endlich in Erscheinung A realistic portrait of Sigmund Freud Ein realistiches Bild Sigmund Freuds hrung, in Fichtner et al., 2011, pp. 415) (Grubrich Simitis, Einfu
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Letter to Jones not dated but probably around NovemberDecember 1956 (Steiner, 2000). Int J Psychoanal (2013) 94
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More than 60 years have passed since that moving, sad, rather suffocating, painful and intriguing saga took place on both sides of the Atlantic, involving Freuds and Marthas families and friends, and the heated exchanges concerning the Brautbriefe that I have recalled. The edition of the Brautller and I. Grubrich-Simitis (from briefe edited by G. Fichtner, Hirschmu now on quoted as Fichtner et al., 2011) now allows us to read in the original German the first of five volumes comprising all the available letters exchanged between Sigmund Freud and Martha Bernays.15 It took more than ten years of the most excruciating, precise and creative philological, historical and exegetic work on the part of the three German scholars to produce what can today be considered probably the masterpiece of research on Freuds private and scientific pre-analytical life. The complex vicissitudes of the Brautbriefe after they were deposited at the Library of Congress are narrated in the Vorbemerkung [Preface] of the Brautbriefe (Fichtner et al., 2011, pp. 711). Overcoming her and her familys anxieties about the possible misrepresentations of the lives of her mother and father, two years before her death in 1980 Anna Freud stated that she did not object to the Brautbriefe being published in toto in the future, although not before the year 2000. Obviously, in the meantime they were studied by more than one scholar and in particular by P. Gay (1989a) for his biography of Freud. The letters have been constantly at the centre of the so-called Freud Wars of the gutter and of the revisionist historiography that has flourished around Freuds life.16 The edition by Fichtner et al. (2011) used a transcript of the letters made by K. Eissler (although completely revised by Fichtner, Grubrich-Simitis ller). K. Fichtner was a palaeographer by profession and at and Hirschmu the time the greatest living expert on Freuds handwriting and manuscripts, who unfortunately died in early 2012. It may be an exaggeration to claim that the Freud Archives have been finally hit by that storm from paradise which moves the angel of history, the angelus novus about which W. Benjamin speaks so movingly in Thesis IX of his Theses on the Philosophy of History (Arendt, 1970, p. 258). I would not call them the three angels of history of the Brautbriefe, but certainly the three German scholars who edited the Brautbriefe have witnessed the strong breath of fresh air that the opening of the Freud Archives, thanks to its director H. Blum, has brought to studies of Freud and to the origins of psychoanalysis. Thousands of documents have been liberated, although at this date not completely (Derrida, 1995; Yerushalmi, 1994) from the weight of the accumulated dust of excessive fears, prejudices, mysterious legends, and inevitable malicious gossip which had surrounded the Archives for decades under the directorship of K. Eissler. Indeed, the editorial achievement of these three German scholars has only been possible because, in addition to their own
15 One has to acknowledge the generosity and the dedication to the cause of psychoanalysis of the German publisher Fischer Verlag of Frankfurt am Main. 16 For instance, just think of the most recent book by Markel (2011), Anatomy of an Addiction, and of the row created by F. C. Crewss review of it in the New York Review of Books (29 September and 13 October 2011): Crews had access to the Brautbriefe now too. See also the letters by Markel and Crews published by the New York Review of Books on 10 November 2011.
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unique knowledge of Freud manuscripts, his family and his cultural scientific and social background and context acquired through decades of work, they had free access to all sorts of necessary and complementary letters and documents deposited in the Freud Archives; they were then able, through their collective effort, to integrate and make sense of this enormous wealth of information. The work of the editors has to be seen in the light of the strong German academic, historical and philological, historiographical tradition. This means that every possible care has been taken to provide the best possible philological, established and annotated text of the Brautbriefe: this includes descriptions of the quality of the paper, the measure of each single letter, the colour of the ink, the kind of dip-pens and nibs used, the headings of the letters, along with every possible deletion, correction, variant of words or of dates (sometimes a real puzzle), and the idiomatic colour of the German or the Austrian German language; these details were all registered or explained or prudently guessed at by Fichtner and his colleagues. Incidentally, Fichtner collated all the information about the Brautbriefe in an enormous computerized database. The database can give us an idea of the particular historiographical approach toward editing the Brautbriefe in comparison with the artisanal and personal methods of collecting information employed by A. Freud, E. Jones and the Bernfelds.17 Every personal name, every literary, scientific, philosophical, religious work, in whatever language quoted by Freud and Martha, every topographical and geographical location, every item of historical or social information, has been added or clarified, annotated or commented upon, and when necessary a corrected quotation from a poet or a writer is inserted by Grubller. rich-Simitis and Hirschmu In what follows I will be focusing only on the first of the five volumes of the Brautbriefe, which contains all sorts of information about Freuds and Marthas families, such as a wonderful series of photographs of Freud, Martha and their relatives that are an essential part of the correspondence; it also contains a succinct chronology and an exhaustive bibliography, as well as the Geheim-Chronik and letters from Freud to his sister Rosa and Marthas mother Emmeline.18 Ilse Grubrich-Simitiss elegant, extremely scholarly and balanced General Introduction is a very respectful, but at the same time not parochial, idealized or moralistic way of looking at the relationship between Freud and Martha. With great historical sensitivity, she points out the importance of feminism in the rediscovery of Martha, and when necessary she uses a contemporary interdisciplinary approach based on the history of mentalities, and cultural anthropology, to contextualize the correspondence between the young fianc es and their families and friends, and the cultural, social, everyday life of those years.
17 Nevertheless, one should not forget that the Bernfelds were the first to try to collect even the most minute information on Freuds life, his first studies, etc., and had created a sort of filing system of all that information. 18 Beside the lack of a subject index in the first volume I wonder why the Editors did not add the important letter from Freud to Minna on the subject of Emmeline, dated 21 February 1883, Vienna (Freud E, 1960, pp. 368; 1961, pp. 524).
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She creates what she rightly calls a realistic image of Sigmund Freud [ein realistisches Bild Sigmund Freuds]. Grubrich-Simitis is also able for the first time to point out in great detail the extremely interesting and important links between the language that both Freud and Martha used in writing to each other with the future work of Freud as a psychoanalyst hrung, in Fichtner et al., 2011, pp. 237). (Einfu But, as Grubrich-Simitis (Fichtner et al., 2011, pp. 1415, 414) rightly points out in some of the most perceptive pages of her Introduction, the real novelty of the Brautbriefe is to be found in Marthas strong voice, her presence as a partner, lover and supporter of the young Freud, and also as a writer in her own right. All of Marthas available letters are published in this edition for the first time. And for the first time she appears in the foreground indeed, I would say she often occupies the entire stage. For me, Freuds image becomes realistic because of the presence of Martha in this correspondence. Grubrich-Simitis draws the readers attention to Freuds difficulties and to Marthas handling of their deferred sexual relahrung, in Fichtner et al., 2011, pp. 367), as well as Marthas tionship (Einfu capacity to tolerate and understand Freuds at times explosive emotions; this is quite astonishing if one bears in mind that she was only around 21 years old when they first met. It is Marthas appearance and the fundamental role she starts to play in Freuds life from the beginning of their engagement which illustrates just how radically different the Fichtner et al. (2011) edition is from the previous very selective collection of Brautbriefe, edited by Ernest Freud (1960, 1961). In his famous edition of his fathers selected correspondence from 1873 to 1939, which contained 98 of the Brautbriefe,19 Ernst did not select and publish one single letter written by Martha to Freud (Fichtner et al., 2011, pp. 1415). Of course, Ernest Freuds entire selection could have given the readers of the 1960s a more than sufficient idea of Freuds qualities as a writer.20 But in Ernest Freuds collection the resulting image of Freud, his private life and feelings is rather idealized and distorted. Having said this, I think one has also to acknowledge a sort of ideal line of continuity between Ernst Freuds selection of Brautbriefe, the wishes of Freuds family in general, and the Fichtner et al. edition. Disagreeing implicitly with Joness interpretative attitude in his biography of Sigmund Freud (Fichtner et al., 2011, p. 14), in Ernests (1960) introduction to his fathers letters he wrote that: I want my Fathers every letter to stand by itself unencumbered. His voice, his spirit, alone, should be allowed r to permeate this book [Jedes Brief meines Vaters soll als Dokument fu
19 20
They were later on published separately in a single small volume (Freud E, 1968).
In a letter to Fluss dated 16 June 1873 (Freud E, 1960, p. 6), Freud tells Fluss that his professor at n einen idiotischen Stil nennt, das ist einen Stil, school thought he possessed what Herder [] so scho der zugleich korrekt und charakteristisch ist [Herder so nicely calls an idiotic style, that is to say a style at once correct and characteristic] (Freud, 1961, p. 26, my italics). It is in this letter that Freud invites Fluss to preserve their correspondence. Int J Psychoanal (2013) 94 Copyright 2013 Institute of Psychoanalysis
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sich allein stehen. Nur seiner Stimme und Gestalt soll man in diesem Buch begegnen Freud E, 1961, p. 4, my italics].21 There is no doubt that Grubrich-Simitis and her colleagues did not forget those statements. The publication of Marthas letters adds her full voice and her spirit to that of Sigmund Freud, without being cluttered up with excessive psychoanalytic and wild interpretations.22 In spite of Joness liberties in interpreting Freud, which led to E. Freuds criticisms that I have just mentioned, but which nevertheless were rather restrained to my mind and at least on the surface accepted by Anna compared with what one could read on the founder of psychoanalysis and his private life in the historiography which followed for more than half of the last century and the beginning of the new millennium, the Editors (Fichtner et al., 2011) would probably agree in principle even with what Jones had written to Anna concerning the need for the full truth in biographical and historical research. Incidentally, to a certain extent even Ernst Freud seemed to agree with some of Joness principles in the early 1950s when, as we know, he originally supported Joness wish to have access to and use of the Brautbriefe. And in the end, one has to say, in allowing the letters to be published in toto, even Anna seemed in her own cautious and personal way to subscribe to this view. The three German scholars have therefore successfully managed to put at the readers disposal as many available historical facts as possible, to allow the reader a richer and more exhaustive interpretation of the Brautbriefe. Even if, as everybody who has done this kind of research knows only too well subjective choice and interpretation are factors in any selection of historical facts, and these choices and interpretations have to be considered case by case. I therefore do not think that the three German scholars believe their work represents the final truth of objective research and editing even as far as the Brautbriefe is concerned.
The letters: Freud and Martha

I am so exclusive where I love [Ich bin so ausschlielich wo ich liebe]. (Freud to Martha, 19 June 1882; Fichtner et al., 2011, p. 94) I can love you only very much, indeed quite terribly, if you are content with this [Ich kann Dich nur sehr, ja ganz schrecklich lieb haben, wenn Du damit zufrieden bist]. (Martha to Freud, 24 June 1882; Fichtner et al., 2011, p. 111) we im K Like a caged lion [Wie ein gefangener Lo afig]. (Martha to Freud, 2 July 1882; Fichtner et al., 2011, p. 142)
21 Grubrich-Simitis worked with Ernest in the late 1960s and early 1970s on other biographical researches into Freud (Freud E et al., 1976. In this work the editors used many Brautbriefe which had not been hrung, in Fichtner et al., 2011, p. 14). published before (Grubrich-Simitis, Einfu 22 Although Grubrich-Simitis (Fichtner et al., 2011, pp. 337) with great finesse tries to link Freuds early and at times very traumatic life experiences to the way he behaves in his relationship with Martha, using the most up-to-date biographical researches on the earliest years of Freuds life, the same could be done for Marthas early life (Fichtner et al., 2011, pp. 2931).
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R. Steiner r Despot ich bin]. You see what a despot I am [Du siehst was fu (Freud to Martha, 8 July 1882; Fichtner et al., 2011, p. 173) My beloved tyrant [mein geliebter Tyrann]. (Martha to Freud, 10 July 1882; Fichtner et al., 2011, p. 182)
Suddenly, from a very old collection of handwritten letters and an album of photographs yellowed by the passing of time, through the editing work ller and Grubrich-Simitis, the of the German scholars Fichtner, Hirschmu passionate and troubled relationship of this young engaged couple comes to life for us with extraordinary sharpness and vigour. The first letter in our possession is dated 11 June 1882 and is written by Martha to Freud. The last letter of this first volume of the Brautbriefe is dated 12 July 1883 and is written by Freud to Martha. Freud was nearly 26 years old and Martha was nearly 21 when more than 130 years ago they met by chance in Vienna in April 1882. Cupid struck at first sight that evening in the humble23 home in Leopoldstadt, Vienna, at least for Freud. One feels that the same happened to Martha, although with a more cautious and reserved intensity at first. To better understand how and why it happened in that way I think the reader should be briefly reminded of some aspects of the socio-cultural historical context of this encounter (Gibs, 1997). Try to imagine Leopoldstadt, which formed District II of Vienna during those years. It was the lower middle class mainly Jewish quarter if one does not want to call it a shtetl or ghetto of which it could remind one of Catholic Vienna, where Jews had lived since mediaeval times. Its housing was crowded and often shabby. The streets were narrow, but lined with an abundance of shops of all sorts and full of more or less recent immigrants. Particularly noticeable were the Ostjuden , walking, chatting, selling and buying on the streets, wearing their traditional dress (Mayer, 1917; Rabinbach, 1975) all so different from the affluent streets and houses around the Ringstrasse in the central part of Vienna where, besides the elegant suburbs, most of the rich Jewish middle class gradually established their homes from the second half of the 19th century onwards and where Freud will live later on (Schorske, 1979, pp. 24111; Berkley, 1988, pp. 910, 12047; Beller, 1989, pp. 6773; Gay, 1989a, pp. 915; Wistrich, 1989, pp. 4576; Berger, 2003; Schubert, 2007; Feuerstein and Milchram, 2007). As the reader probably knows, it was in Leopoldstadt that Freud and his gel, 1996, p. 117) from family had mostly lived and were living in 1882 (To the time his father Jacob, a poor merchant, brought his small family from Freiberg in Moravia to Vienna in 1860; he brought his very young wife Amalia, Sigmund, who was 4, and Sigmunds younger sister Anna24 (Freud, 1925, pp. 45; Jones, 1956, pp. 1220; Glicklhorn, 1969, pp. 3743; Gay,
23 Humble is the term used by M. Freud (1957, p. 20) to describe his fathers family home. See also Freud-Bernays, 1973, p. 141 (Ruitenbeek, 1973). 24 The families of both Jacob and Amalia came from a rabbinical tradition. Jacobs ancestors lived in Lithuania and east Galicia. Amalia was born in Brody, Galicia, deeply imbued with the Hassidic Jewish Orthodox tradition (Aron, 1956, pp. 28695; Freud M, 1957, p. 11).
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1989a, pp. 721).25 Freuds family joined the anxious crowds of Jewish immigrants who started coming to Vienna during the second half of the 19th century to escape financial and political difficulties, as well as pogroms in the case of the Polish-Russian Jews (Rabinbach, 1975). They travelled from Bohemia and Moravia, and the so-called Ostjuden, coming from Galicia, all regions which Le Rider rightly calls the colonies of the AustroHungarian Empire (Bartal, 2005; Le Rider and Rachl, 2010 pp. 513; Berkley, 1988, pp. 2758; Hobsbawm, 2013). For pragmatic reasons the Emperor Franz Joseph wanted to make better use of the Jews since the upheaval of 1848; under his so-called liberal pluralistic politics he reformed the mediaeval policies of control and taxation and exclusions, which had characterized the way they had been treated by many of his predecessors (Berkley, 1988, pp. 2732). Within two to three decades from 1848 onwards, those immigrants had enormously increased the Jewish population of Vienna (see Drabek et al., 1988; Berkley, 1988, pp. 2738; Beller, 1989).26 Packing themselves mainly into Leopoldstadt, the Jewish immigrants looked for and developed new jobs and initiatives, working hard for a better future. Many of them, as in the case of Freud, succeeded in integrating themselves with great academic and professional hre Kultur of the gentile Aussuccess into the famous German-speaking ho tro-Hungarian Empire, which could open the doors to all sorts of liberal professions (Weinzierl, 2003). Particularly after Franz Josephs 1867 inter-religious Act, which guaranteed for the Jews, at least on paper, a sort of equal civil rights, including the right to reside and the freedom to profess their religion (Berkley, 1988, pp. 307), and driven by their wish to study (Gay, 1989a, pp. 147), the Jewish immigrants were able to make use of all sorts of opportunities offered by a good, non-discriminating, higher state education. This offered Jewish men, at least, the possibility of graduating from Vienna University in a variety of disciplines. There is not a single study on the Jews in Vienna of those decades which does not stress the almost explosive rise in the number of Jews in higher education and university at that time. Yet and this is important to remember as far as Martha was concerned women, whether Jewish or non-Jewish, were not allowed to take university courses until the end of the 19th and beginning of the 20th century in the AustroHungarian Empire (Berkley, 1988, p. 20; Albisetti, 1996[1988], pp. 3546, Hobsbawm, 2013), and the range of subjects they studied in their colleges of higher education was much more restricted.
25 gel (1996, pp. 1518), Freud and his family lived at various addresses from 1875 According to To onwards. When Freud met Martha, he was living with his family at 3 Kaiser Joseph Strasse in Leopoldstadt. Freuds family had gradually increased since their arrival in Vienna. It eventually consisted of five sisters and another brother. Four of the sisters and the brother were born in Vienna. 26 It is impossible here to go into detail concerning this complex and landmark chapter in the life of Vienna as capital of the Austro-Hungarian Habsburg Empire. Suffice to note here that, not to mention the few hundred Jews present in Vienna before 1848 still vexed by all sorts of uncivilized controls and limitations in their professions and practice of their religion, from 1857 to 1880 the Jewish population in Vienna increased from 1.3% of the total population to 10.1% (Rabinbach, 1975, p. 48; Beller, 1989, p. 44; Berkley, 1988, pp. 1456).
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The young Freud was therefore undoubtedly one of the best examples of the need, so clear and prominent in him since his years spent at the RealOber Gymnasium of Leopoldstadt, to acquire the necessary Bildung [education] and to professionally and intellectually integrate himself into that Kultur which he had worshipped since he was a young adolescent (Freud, 1925, p. 7; Schorske, 1979, pp. 1817; Boehlich, 1990, pp. 245; Gay, 1989a, pp. 336; Steiner, 1994). And then he tried to climb the difficult academic ladder at Vienna University as a medical scientist researcher (Freud, 1925, pp. 918; Bernfeld and Cassirer Bernfeld, 1981[1944]; Jones, 1956, pp. 306427 ; McGrath, 1974; Gay, 1989a, pp. 1920). But as far as his private life was concerned, Freud still lived as many of the young Jews of those years did, in a sort of cocoon in Leopoldstadt, in a close-knit group made up of Jewish families and mainly Jewish friends although he was also educated at the RealOber Gymnasium and then at the University. And it is to this everyday private life that I would like to briefly draw the attention of the reader, if he wants to better understand what happened that evening in April 1882 at Freuds house. I do not want to go into the complex problem of Freuds Jewish identity related to his upbringing in that particular family, with that particular ll, 1986; Diller, 1991; Margolis, 1976; Breger, 2000), father and mother (Kru in which he had such a privileged position. Nor do I want to discuss although I will have to come back to these issues later on the progressive liberal influence his father had on him since he was a small boy, and the strong independence of mind Freud showed since he was very small towards his own father, even as far as Jewish religion and traditions were concerned (see Freud M, 1957, pp. 204; Freud-Bernays, 1973, pp. 1412). On those issues, too much has already been written. Those were of course the deepest, most personal roots of that cocoon. Obviously with the passing of time, and changing political and social circumstances in Vienna, Europe and even Palestine, the inevitable ambiguity, tensions and conflicts related to those aspects of Freuds cultural identity as an integrated liberal Austrian and central European Jew would articulate, shift and become more complicated. Just think of the advent of Nazism (Loewenberg, 1971; Cuddihy, 1974; Roberts, 1977; Schorske, 1979, pp. 181207; Rozenblit, 1983, pp. 87106; Scholem, 1984; Gay, 1978; Mosse, 1985; Le Rider, 1990, pp. 22344; Beller, 1989, pp. 3448; Gay, 1987, 1989a, pp. 1220; Diller, 1991; Yerushalmi, 1991; Loewenberg, 1995, pp. 1745; Grubrich-Simitis, 1997). I would like to draw the attention of the reader of this first volume of the Brautbriefe to the inevitable role that Freuds cocoon was still playing in his everyday life during those years. It did not allow him to forget his complex cultural Jewish identity, not only within his family but even outside it. One could say that this close Jewish milieu, whether hated or loved, and without exaggerating its importance, created the necessary conditions for Freud to meet Martha. This self-selecting community the Bund, as Freud called it (Jones, 1956, p. 179) was composed largely of doctors or researchers (Beller, 1989, pp. 6798), but other occupations figured in this community too:
27
He used most of the pioneering researches of the Bernfelds in this area, which I mentioned earlier. Copyright 2013 Institute of Psychoanalysis
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nberg, one of Freuds best friends, was a philosopher (Fichtner et al., I. Scho 2011, p. 94), not to mention Paneth, Freuds friend during his late adolescence. But they all had one thing in common: they were young men looking for a fianc ee or a wife. They saw each other in the company of their sisters and relatives and close friends at their homes in Leopoldstadt or nearby, or at the Caf e Kurzweil, where they would have discussions and games of chess (Jones, 1956, p. 179). They relaxed together with walks and meetings in the hills surrounding Vienna or, for instance, at the Prater (a park located in the Viennese district of Leopoldstadt). As far as these young men were concerned, they were all potential fianc es of their friends sisters and, as far as the girls were concerned, with the friends of their brothers. Although it was not only typical of the Jews (Stone, 1982, pp. 33140, 1987; Gay, 1984, pp. 1767; Giddens, 1992), one should not forget the condition of young Jewish girls in a Jewish patriarchal society in and outside Vienna during those years. Religious orthodoxy played a very restrictive role (Rozenblit, 1983; Kaplan, 1991; Hobsbawm, 2013), and they had far fewer chances of professional and academic improvement and freedom than their brothers, or the friends of their brothers. Family and inter-family contacts had an enormous and overriding importance in this context. Meetings and family parties designed to facilitate introductions or foster encounters which could develop into engagements and marriages and combined marriages by the families were not uncommon, particularly given the social conditions of those girls (Kaplan, 1991; Beller, 1989; Sulzgruber, 2005). Think too of the opportunities that this group of friends had to speak or to listen, on the streets of Leopoldstadt or the Caf e Kurzweil, to that Austro-German language so full of Yiddish expressions, and the exchanges of Jewish jokes, and the Yiddish and Hebrew often spoken at home.28 And think of the hidden, but so important, unconscious familiarity of the body language, of certain gestures and sights that they all carried, as Freud himself did, imprinted on their minds and their bodies and bones, born, shaped and transmitted through centuries, due to the communal life and even the persecutions in the shtetls, and still present in the Jewish inhabitants of Leopoldstadt. And think also of the shared Jewish festivities, of the specificity, smell and flavour of certain foods, and the meaning of all that even in families that were not strictly Orthodox. All this, and of course other reasons too, constantly reminded Freud of his roots, mirroring or echoing what he found at home where he had been living since he was born, giving him an at times rather suffocating sense of belonging to a specific community, starting of course with his own rather complex family story and experience, which has been so clearly described hrung, in Fichtner et al., 2011, pp. 367).29 by Grubrich-Simitis (Einfu
28
Amalia Freuds mother spoke Galician Yiddish all her life, even in Vienna (Diller, 1991, p. 60). Of course, at least as far as the young Freud was concerned, it was a different matter when he had to write or to communicate with non-Jewish colleagues, friends and professors. The quality of his German was already evident if one reads the letters he wrote to E. Fluss, or the FreudSilberstein correspondence, besides of course his scientific work.
29 See also although with some cautiousness because of the constant attempts to interpret the relationship between mother and son Diller (1991) and Margolis (1976) on the special role that Amalia, the mother of Freud, played concerning Freuds feelings and character and relations with women.
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And one should not forget, in such a closed and complicated family, the important conscious and unconscious roles Freud played for his sisters; he acted as an affectionate but also strict, and at times cultural, mentor (Freud-Bernays, 1973, p. 142).30 All this inevitably orientated his affective choices in a certain way. Then, last but not least, there was the presence of the always latent antiSemitism in reinforcing all those links, and in helping to close ranks, in a minority community of rather recent immigrants who still carried the memories of persecutions and pogroms in Eastern Europe. This was the antiSemitism of which Freud had already had experience as a boy through the autobiographical stories of his father (Freud S, 1900, GW 2, p. 203; SE 4, p. 197) and then as a student at the Gymnasium (Freud S, 1900, GW 2, p. 202; SE 4, p. 196), not to mention what happened later on as far as his university career was concerned (Schorske, 1979; McGrath, 1974; Le Rider, 1990, pp. 23147; Gay, 1987, 1989a). This anti-Semitism had been tamed for a while during the so-called golden period of the liberal reforms of Franz Joseph (Fraenkel, 1967; Beller, 1989, pp. 18897; Berkley, 1988, pp. 318). But it was now, at the beginning of the 1880s resurgent in and outside Vienna, for various reasons (Boyer, 1981). Furthermore the political and financial failures of the Austro-Hungarian Empire had culminated in the crash of the Viennese stock market in 1873 and in the Long Depression that followed. The economic consequences of that crash also affected Freuds and Marthas families (Le Rider, 1987, pp. 244420; Berkley, 1988, pp. 6578; Gay, 1989a, pp. 1521). I do not think I am exaggerating therefore when I claim that it would have been very difficult to imagine that Freud intended to find a nonJewish young woman as his fianc ee and future wife. In other words, it is very difficult to imagine that in those years he would have considered an inter-religious marriage possible. And the same could be said even more strongly for Martha vis- a-vis her potential husband. Freud learned much of Jewish religion and culture from his father when he was a young boy. And at school, with extraordinary teachers such as S. Hammerschlag who, like Freuds father, was a Reform Jew (Rainey, 1975) and would later become one of Freuds much needed financial helpers Freud studied Jewish religion and culture in much greater depth than one might suspect. And yet, despite all that, Freud had been a godless Jew since he was a young university student, if not earlier (Gay, 1987; Le Rider, 1990, pp. 22331). It would therefore be to my mind ridiculous to claim that the psychoanalysis he discovered later on could be considered a Jewish science.
30 Freud will more than once compare his love for Martha, and the kisses given to her, to his love for his sisters. In the first volume of the Brautbriefe see, for instance, Freuds letters to Martha dated 26 June and 4 July 1882 (Fichtner et al., 2011, pp. 115, 150) Martha becomes in some ways a substitute for Anna, Freuds eldest sister, as far as his cultural suggestions for readings of books were concerned: see the letter Freud wrote to Silberstein, dated 20 December 1874, in which Freud tells Silberstein about a collection of biographies by Grube he wanted to give to his sister Anna for New Year (Boehlich, 1990, p. 90). But, according to Anna, when she was a young, 15 year-old adolescent he told her not to read Balzac and Dumas because he thought she was too young (Freud-Bernays, 1973, p. 142)! J. Mitchell (2003) who is so interested in the role played by siblings could find rich food of thought in all this.
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As we will see, all these complicated issues will seriously interfere in his dealings with Martha, who came from Germany and from a much more traditional and devout Jewish Orthodox family. Bearing in mind what I have just mentioned, let us go back to that evening, one imprecise day in April 1882 when Freud met the young Martha Bernays. It must have been one of those typical evenings for the Freud family, when the young Sigmund made his way very quickly through the streets cke Laboratories, where he was of Leopoldstadt travelling back from Bru working as a physiologist, to his humble home (Freud M, 1957, p. 20). It was an apartment where, in addition to a living room and a kitchen, there were three bedrooms into which were crowded all his sisters, his brother and his parents. Freud, however, was allowed to have his own special single room, where he would often retire after work to eat by himself, or be joined by his friends to study and discuss all sorts of scientific or cultural or political issues (Freud M, 1957, pp. 914).31 Perhaps the best portrait of those evenings is still the one sketched by his sister Anna (1973, pp. 1403) in which, incidentally, one can really catch the social implications of that particular atmosphere of formal good manners, but also of distance, between the young Jewish men and women in those families, not to mention the more or less discreet controlling role played by the parents the girls anxiously hoping, and always waiting, to be noticed by the young men, who in the case of Freuds friends were all too serious and too busy to notice them.32 I do not think it is difficult to imagine the young Freuds pleasurable surprise in suddenly spotting Martha. Incidentally, this was a difficult time for Freud, who in 1881 had only recently graduated in medicine after a long and protracted period of study. He was worried about his career prospects as a researcher, despite his brilliant discoveries, and he was enduring chronic poverty, having to support his own family and continually having to ask for loans from his friends, such as S. Hammerschlag, J. Breuer and cke Freuds great others (Gay, 1989a, p. 3753). A few weeks later, Bru mentor and master (Freud, 1925, SE 20, pp. 910) strongly advised him cke Institute and work instead as to abandon his academic career at the Bru a doctor, to earn more money and be better able to support himself and his family.
31 Freud had been always treated as special by his parents since he was a child, due to his exceptional intelligence and good results at school: M. Freud (1957, pp. 102) and A. Freud-Bernays (1973, pp. 1402) both emphasized the fact that he was allowed to have his own private room. Another important detail is that Freud was allowed to use an oil lamp in the evenings, whereas the rest of the family had to use candles. Freud will use this oil lamp to write to Martha during the first months of his engagement while still living at home. 32 Although one has to be very careful in making this kind of comparison, due to the risk of easy and superficial analogies, one could think of literary references from different cultural and social contexts, and earlier periods, to that of Freuds family and friends in Vienna. Take, for example, the five Bennett sisters of Jane Austens Pride and Prejudice (1811) all waiting to be married! Of course, the Bennett sisters did not live in Vienna during the 1870s and 1880s, were not Jewish and belonged to a different social group to that of Freuds fianc ee and her family, but this serves to emphasize the common trends which characterized the female condition in Europe during the 19th century. And one could find other examples
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Whether Freuds sisters had deliberately invited Martha and her sister Minna, whose family they knew,33 to their house in order to introduce Marller sugtha to Freud is of course a matter of speculation. But if, as Hirschmu gests (2005, p. 207, in de Mijolla, 2005), Minna had got engaged to nberg, one of Freuds closest friends, and probably his closest friend at Scho that time, in February 1882, we can perhaps surmise that Freud had already nberg was heard of the existence of Martha before he met her. Certainly, Scho one of the few people who knew both Freud and Martha before their meeting, and then knew of the relationship that began to form following that meeting. This was one of those occasions when one has to understand the facilitating importance of that closed milieu I mentioned earlier in favouring these kinds of encounters with all their possible developments and happy endings. It was love at first sight certainly for Freud. But just think of the first scene of this encounter. What did Freud see in his first glance at Martha? It was a little girl who was sitting at the long, familiar table at his house [ein kleines M adchen das am bekannten langen Tisch sa], and who with her little fingers was peeling apples [und mit kleine Fingern Apfel sch alte], as he wrote to Martha three years and a few months later, remembering their first encounter (Freud to Martha, 26 June 1885).34 What a stereotypical image, even for those times, of a potential young housewife and as we will see, this is what Freud wanted Martha to be! Of course, one could remark on the affectionate but also mildly patronizing tone of Freuds description of Martha as a kleines M adchen and of her kleine Fingern, although the phrase kleines M adchen, which appears frequently in the first volume of the Brautbriefe, was in those days a common term of endearment with which to address ones young fianc ee. And, after all, Martha was indeed as pale and petite as Freud suggests. Thinking of this, besides other more illustrious literary examples, I am reminded of the role played by the apple of Adam and Eve in the biblical Paradise, and of Goethes Die Leiden des jungen Werthers (1981[1774], p. 28), published in English as The Suffering of Young Werther (1962[1774], p. 59),35 the most iconic epistolary romance of German Sturm und Drang proto-Romantic literature,36 which describes how Werther falls in love with Charlotte after seeing her cutting the bread for her siblings! After all, as we have seen, even Anna Freud called those years of her fathers life his Sturm und Drang
Anna, the eldest of Freuds sisters, became engaged to Eli Marthas brother at Christmas 1882. nberg on 12 February 1882, at the age of 17. Minna Marthas sister became engaged to I. Scho nberg would die later on (Hirschmu ller, 2005, p. 207). Scho
33 34 I would like to thank Ilse Grubrich-Simitis, who allowed me to see this letter, which is not in the first volume of the Brautbriefe. 35 Incidentally, Freud had been reading Goethes Werther since he was young. It is quoted in the correspondence with Silberstein (Boehlich, 1990, pp. 234). He referred to the same work in a letter to Martha dated 8 July 1882, in which he tried to ridicule Fritz one of his rivals for Marthas love (Fichtner et al., 2011, p. 174). 36 In the Geheim Chronik the first statement by Martha dated 26 January 1883 seems to hint at a romantic moment in their relationship Die Romantik liegt hinter uns [Romanticism belongs to the past] (Fichtner et al., 2011, p. 531). Although one has to say there were several more so-called romantic tensions and moments later on in their engagement.
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period! I leave to the enthusiasts of psychoanalytic interpretations the possible meaning of all those girls with knives in their hands! A few months later, in a letter to Freud, Martha mentioned one of the first evenings they were together with Minna in Freuds living room and Freuds implicit need to have her all for himself. Martha spoke of his restlessness, his we im running up and down like a caged lion [wie ein gefangener Lo K afig], firing angry glances at her, here and there, instead of sitting down and taking part in the conversation (2 July 1882; Fichtner et al., 2011, p. 142). One can catch something of Freuds restless, anxious, absolute passion in the first letter he wrote to Martha printed in the Brautbriefe (15 June 1882; Fichtner et al., 2011, p. 86)37 in which he openly declared to her how in the space of no more than two months and a few meetings, during which they rarely had a moment to themselves she had changed his life: Dear Martha, how did you change my life! [Teure Martha, wie haben Sie mein Leben ver andert!] And it is in this letter that he asked Martha whether the next time they met she would allow him to address her with the more intimate pronoun du.38 But who was Martha? Gay (1989a, p. 37) describes her as slender, lively, dark and rather pale, with expressive dark eyes. She was certainly attractive.39 The photographs of that time bear testimony to a rather restrained aristocratic elegance, and her eyes reveal, I would say, a sort of internal firmness, a tranquil intensity and a deep internal emotional life. Only recently, as Grubrich-Simitis rightly stresses, has there been the chance to get to know Martha better (Fichtner et al., 2011, pp. 1523), particularly through Behlings (2005) beautiful biography, but see also Badou (2006). Martha was the daughter of Berman Bernays, who was the son of the famous Jewish Sephardic scholar and educator Hacham [wise man] Isaac Bernays, the strict Orthodox Chief Rabbi of Hamburgs Jewish community (Krohon, 1974, pp. 2955, 11728; Behling, 2005, pp. 911) and a personal friend of the poet Heinrich Heine, among others. Marthas father Berman Bernays therefore belonged to one of the most illustrious intellectual German-Jewish Orthodox families40; he was a rather troublesome man who
37 This letter nota bene! bore in the top left corner the printed name of his father. Later on Freud wrote on headed paper bearing the consonants S and M interlocked. 38 In German, as in other languages, there is a rather pronounced difference between the more formal (or polite) singular pronoun Sie and the more personal and intimate (or familiar) du. This nuance has no equivalent in modern English.
In more than one letter in this first volume both Freud and Martha discussed Marthas appearance. Martha was very modest about herself and thought that Minna was more attractive. Freud reassured Martha more than once that for him only she existed see the important letter dated 6 September 1882; Fichtner et al., 2011, p. 344. And yet, perhaps one of Freuds most telling and important letters on this subject is the one dated 2 August 1882 in which he gently reproaches Martha because she undervalues herself. He explains to Martha that he is attracted not only to her beauty but also to her inner world, and that he is not attracted so much by simple external beauty (Fichtner et al., 2011, p. 242), although he also sometimes expresses himself in a rather odd way, as when (2011, p. 360) he describes Marthas eyes as so gro wie Suppenteller as big as soup-plates! In this case he obviously did not have in mind the biblical Song of Solomon (King James Bible, 1991, p. 638) in which the beloved is told thou hast doves eyes! 40 Two of the sons of Isaac Bernays, uncles of Martha, were the famous classicist Jacob Bernays whose researches on Aristotles theories on tragedy and catharsis influenced Freud (Steiner, 1994) and Michael Bernays, a professor at Munich University and a great expert on the work of Goethe and Shakespeare. Jacob left all his money to Martha, Minna and Eli when he died. Copyright 2013 Institute of Psychoanalysis Int J Psychoanal (2013) 94
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at one point decided to move from Hamburg to Vienna to find a better job, and died suddenly in 1879. Due to the difficulties related to the professional career of her father, Martha, together with her sister Minna, who was four years younger, and her brother Eli (the survivors of a much broader group of siblings) and their mother Emmeline were41, like Freud, living at that time in Vienna in District II (Behling, 2005, p. 7) in rather difficult financial conditions. The two sisters were working at home, reading, knitting and waiting, understandably hoping to find the right fianc e and then get married. They were supported by relatives, particularly by Jacob Bernays, and Eli was a sort of young substitute head of the family.42 But that did not mean that Martha had not been properly educated, although with the restrictions that I mentioned earlier. She spoke perfect German, with a Prussian accent that she would keep until the end of her life, in spite of having lived for more than 50 years in Vienna (Behling, 2005, pp. 203). Although she did not have the chance to study for a university degree, what she reveals through her letters to Freud, besides her at times so introspectively perceptive, passionate or even humorous style of writing, is an extraordinary interest in and knowledge of literature, and not only German literature. She had a Bildung und Kultur [education and culture] which sometimes makes one think of a sort of natural scholar.43 On occasion she even wrote poems to Freud. She pursued these interests throughout her life (Freud M, 1956, pp. 1521; Behling, 2005, pp. 2023, 15860). Of course, her family background played a part in all this. Biographers since Jones (1956) using what Freud and Martha wrote in their correspondence later concerning their first encounters have managed to reconstruct more or less correctly the first two months of their furtive meetings and exchanges. Indeed, the first letters we possess, edited by Fichtner et al. (2011, pp. 834), are short notes or letters from Martha and Freud dated 11 June and 13 June 1882, which imply that something had already happened between the two during the months between April and June 1882. It is to these letters that I would now like to turn. On the day that Martha wrote to thank Freud for a gift Dickenss David Copperfield she addressed Freud with the traditional and formal personal pronoun Sie (Martha to Freud, 11 June 1882), having earlier sent him a little cake she had baked44 (Martha to Freud, 11 June 1882; Fichtner
41 Marthas mother Emmeline came from a very strict Jewish Orthodox background in northern Germany and she remained a strict observant of the Jewish faith all her life (Behling, 2005, pp. 1619). 42 Just to show how close the acquaintance of Freud and Martha was, the father of Bertha Pappenheim (Bertha will become the famous Anna O Breuers patient about whom Freud wrote to Martha in a letter dated 19 October 1882; Fichtner et al., 2011, p. 378) had been appointed as one of the guardians of Emmeline Bernayss children after the death of her husband (Behling, 2005, p. 7). 43 Although I could find many examples, consider just this one: in a letter to Freud dated 5 July 1883 (Fichtner et al., 2011, p. 498), when she was on holiday at Wandsbek, Martha wrote that she had started reading a book that the family had at home but which she had not read until now the correspondence between Schiller and Goethe! In my opinion, thinking also of her age and the context in which she was living, this shows the depth of Marthas literary interests. 44
They exchanged presents according to Vielliebchen the Viennese tradition that involves the kernels of dling on 10 June 1882 they had together found a a nut because in their stroll in a garden in Mo double-flowering almond (Behling, 2005, p. 29). Copyright 2013 Institute of Psychoanalysis
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et al., 2011, p. 81). She signed herself Martha Bernays in the first letter and Martha in the second. In another letter (14 June 1882, Fichtner et al., 2011, p. 85) Martha thanked Freud for the heavenly roses [die himmlischen Rosen] which he had sent her. Martha signed the letter von Martha from Martha. There is a sort of understandably self-protective incredulity, and at the same time a flattered coquettish shyness and prudence in Marthas first notes and letters to Freud, who was already famous among his friends as Herr Doktor.45 His powerful presence was that of a conquistador, as Freud called himself later on, and the photographs of Freud in those years (see Fichtner et al., 2011, p. 244) do show the penetrating power of his eyes. His questions, his rather insistent kindness and his gifts were of course exciting and a little embarrassing for Martha. At the same time, however, she seemed to gradually drop her defences, as seen in the changes to her signatures.46 As a result of their private talks and meetings, Freud came to the rapid conclusion that Martha was the woman of his life, as he expressed in the letter dated 15 June. A hint of Freuds possessive anxieties, with which Martha would have to cope, was already present in this letter. Knowing that Martha would be going away on holiday in a few days, Freud said he wanted to write to her but everything had to be kept secret due to their circumstances in order not to compromise her; here, Freud refers to himself as an a poor man [armer Mann] (Fichtner et al., 2011, p. 88) and refers to his helpless imprudence [schwere Unbesonnenheit] (2011, p. 88). During the weekend of 1718 June (Martha to Freud, 9 July 1882, Fichtner et al., 2011, p. 179) Martha went for dinner at Freuds house, and they furtively touched hands under the table [unter dem Tisch],47 as she later recalled nostalgically (19 July 1882). Martha gave Freud a ring that had belonged originally to her mother and had been given to her by her father (Freud to Martha, 23 July 1882; Fichtner et al., 2011, p. 214). They kissed48
45 Martha still addresses Freud as sehr geliebter Herr Dr. [much beloved Mr Doctor] in a letter to him dated 17 June 1882 in which she invites him for a stroll in the Prater (Fichtner et al., 2011, p. 89).
A few weeks later (Martha to Freud, 6 July 1882; Fichtner et al., 2011, p. 156), in reminding Freud and also herself of those first days and encounters, she described for him her first impressions on meeting him, when they spoke after walking down from Kahlenberg and in Viennas Prater on 30 May 1882. And when Minna returned home, Martha told her about Freuds interest in her, his questions about her life and their reading. Martha sounded genuinely surprised that der Dr. [the doctor] as she called Freud, very respectfully had been so interested in uns [us] It is quite telling that she dared not use the word me!!
47 In reality it was not a Spiel [] das niemand merkte [game () that nobody was aware of] as Martha wrote to Freud on 9 July 1882 (Fichtner et al., 2011, p. 179): in a letter dated 12 August 1882 Freud informed Martha that alle Schwestern [all (my) sisters] had known that they had pressed their hands unter dem Tischtuch [under the tablecloth] that famous evening (Fichtner et al., 2011, p. 276). Freud recalled this episode in Uber den Traum, (1901, GW 2/3, pp. 651, 662; On Dreams, 1901, SE 5, pp. 638, 649). 48 See how delicately Martha reminded Freud of that first kiss in a letter dated 8 July 1882 (Fichtner t [And today et al., 2011, p. 177): Und heute heute ist es drei Wochen, da wir uns zuerst geku today it is three weeks since we kissed for the first time]. But see also what the passionate Freud had written to Martha a few weeks earlier, on 26 June 1882 (Fichtner et al., 2011, p. 115): und wisse, t habe als Deine su en Lippen Samstag und da ich meine Schwestern in 26 Jahren nicht so oft geku Montag nach unserer Verlobung [ and (I want you to) know that in 26 years I have not kissed my sisters as often as I did your sweet lips on Saturday and Monday after our engagement]. There was some confusion between Martha and Freud as to the days involved, because Martha also mentioned the Sunday evening and the dinner.
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and made the secret decision to get engaged, promising to each other to stay together from then on, whatever the difficulties they would have to face. The following day, Monday 19 June, Martha took the train to Wandsbek a little town near Hamburg with a small but active Jewish community (Louven, 1989, pp. 95, 135), where her uncle lived and where the family had visited since she was a child. As painful as the sudden Trennung [separation] might appear to have been (Martha to Freud, 20 June 1882; Fichtner et al., 2011, p. 96)49 in the first letters they exchanged after Martha left Vienna, the atmosphere is of a dreamlike, romantic love born out of their experiences and memories of brief but intense and secret encounters, their love and decision to get engaged. It was Freud who, in his letter to Martha dated 19 June 1882, refers to the Einzelheiten [details] of their encounters so mysteriously enchanting that the dream phantasy could have never been capable of devising them ckend, wie die Traumphantasie sie nie zu ersinnen ver[so fremdartig beglu mag]. According to Freud, their encounters were superior even to a dream. And note how he deploys the literary and romantic term Traumphantasie. Freud describes Martha as his dearly beloved girl [teueres, heigeliebtes M adchen], and he tells her that she has increased his self-esteem and given him new hope and strength to work [neue Hoffnung und Arbeitskraft] which he needs so much. After asking Martha to give him as many photographs of her as a child as possible, in addition to the one that she already gave him,50 he quotes from Goethes novel Wilhelm Meister, a text he had known since his adolescence (Boehlich, 1990, pp. 234). For the first time, Freud even quotes Lessings Nathan der Weise (1779); Nathan, the wise man of the books title, is a famous tolerant enlightened Jew, and I will return to his importance to the relationship of Freud and Martha. Freud concludes the letter with a warning that anticipates what will follow: I am so exclusive when I love [Ich bin so ausschlielich, wo ich liebe] (Fichtner et al., 2011, pp. 934). And what about Martha? She starts her letter, breaking all the previous formal conventions of her writing: Sigi, my Sigi! I call you today for the first time by your name! [Sigi, mein Sigi! Ich nenne Dich heute zuerst bei Deinem Namen] (Martha to Freud, 20 June 1882; Fichtner et al., 2011, p. 95). Martha claims that on the train to Wandsbek she was feeling, thinking again of him, of his every word, of their short meetings and love, closing her eyes to be with him and her feelings and memories Martha seemed totally in love, and again, like Freud I would say, as if in a sort of daydream. Of course, die Trennung [the separation] will not last too long, Martha claims. She will write when she can. Freud is the first she
49
Incidentally, Martha, with great intuitive capacity and without the help of psychoanalysis, used die Trennung, and the frustrated emotions related to it, later on to try to placate Freud and to explain to him the reasons for their reciprocal frustration and difficulties in communicating resulting from their separation.
50 The requests for photographs would continue; at one point, Martha affectionately but with a hint of irony suggesting Freuds baby-like possessiveness!! called him du Nimmersatt [you insatiable (person)] (Martha to Freud, 2 July 1882; Fichtner et al., 2011, p. 144).
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has written to Martha ends by saying that she wants to kiss Freuds hands51 and serious eyes [die ernsten Augen] (Fichtner et al., 2011, p. 97). But in this same letter Martha also tells Freud about Max, one of her old friends whom Freud knew; Max had waited for Martha at the station and had, via Fritz, another friend they had in common, heard about Marthas and Freuds love. The personal language of love, particularly evident in the opening and closing of the letters, is a specific charm of the Brautbriefe; in the case of Martha, she reveals a surprising freedom, when one considers her background and the rhetorical conventions of writing letters of that time, in expressing her love and feelings towards Freud. The specificity of Marthas and Freuds characters and vicissitudes of love will lead them to the creation of their own personal written language of love and undoubtedly makes the Brautbriefe, as Grubrich Simitis has so perceptively pointed out, one of the last great epistolary love affairs in the Austro German and European culture of that period (Fichtner et al., 2011, pp. 527). It is really a very significant example of what has been called the postal culture (Henkin, 2003)52 of a certain European and non-European educated class during the 18th and 19th centuries, the writing displaying similar connotative characteristics (Bossis and Porter, 1990, Petrucci, 2000, Antonelli, 2003; Stein, 2006).53 Derridas (1980) La carte postale deserves a particular mention in this context too. Due to the secrecy and difficulties of the encounters between Freud and Martha, what they wrote to each other allows us to make a sort of toponymic study of their love encounters, even the later encounters, because so often they had to meet in a particular street or square near churches and monuments in Vienna. The reader has to imagine what sort of consequences the separation entailed in the everyday world in which Freud and Martha were living at that time (Zweig, 1943; Magris, 1964; Hobsbawm, 2013). As regards transport, for example, there were no cars, of course, but only trains with which to travel from one town to another. In Vienna, if they could not meet by walking, Freud and Martha were able to use the traditional horse-drawn carriages and the horse-drawn tram [Pferdbahn] or, outside Wandsbek or Vienna, a steam train [Dampfbahn].54
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In the letter Martha refers to Freuds hands as die garstigen braunen H ande [(your) horrible brown hands] (Fichtner et al., 2011, p. 97), alluding perhaps to the stains that resulted from his work in the cke laboratory. See Fichtner et al., 2011, note 9, p. 97. Bru
52 Consider, for example, to mention just one among many illustrious examples, the connotative incipits of the letters between F. Kafka and Milena. 53 Not to mention what for me is still one of the fundamental studies in this fascinating area of research, namely L. Spitzers (1921) research on the epistolary language used by Italian prisoners of war in their letters, and their way of expressing or not expressing themselves and their feelings, during World War I. 54 See the moving letter to Freud dated 28 June 1883, Wandsbek, in which, due to Freuds constant pressure and complaints, Martha is so desperate that the only solution is to take the Pferdebahn [horsedrawn tram] to get to the hospital where Freud is at that time working and then go with him to his little room to have a good cry in his arms (Fichtner et al., 2011, p. 470). For die Dampftramway [steampowered tram] see the letter from Freud to Martha dated 24 August 1882 (Fichtner et al., 2011, p. 317).
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Berkley (1988, p. 17) reminds us that until as late as 1890 doctors at the Vienna General Hospital were still performing operations by candlelight. This kind of lighting was of course used in Freuds and Marthas houses in the evenings and in Freuds little office in the Wiener Allgemeine Krankenhaus [Vienna General Hospital]. Freud began working there, following ckes advice, at more or less the same time as he got engaged to Martha, Bru in order to earn some decent money as a doctor. He began living permanently in a little room at the hospital on 1 September 1882 after having left his family home for the first time (Freud to Martha, 5 October 1883, E. Freud, 1976, p. 104; Freud to Martha, 19 August 1882, Fichtner et al., 2011, p. 301). And one can easily imagine that Martha found herself in the same conditions in Vienna and Wandsbek when writing in the evenings or at night. They wrote to each other still using dip-pens with a metal nib and of course they needed an inkwell. Martha sometimes even used pencils, secretly hiding herself away to write to Freud on Saturdays to avoid the control of her mother who, due to her religious orthodoxy, would not allow her to write at all. Pencils were indeed easier to hide and to use than dip-pens (Jones, 1956, p. 127). Freud and Martha, like so many others in similar situations in those days, therefore had to rely on trains and on the efficiency of the Austro-Hungarian and Prussian postal services. And of course the sudden separation, after their secret engagement and reciprocal promises to love each other, because they freely chose each other, increased in both of them the need to write one, two, sometimes three letters per day. And in Freuds case, sometimes the letters were four or five pages long. Freuds passion and frustrated love in those circumstances gave him enormous energy. All this could easily constitute the ingredients of the plot of a typical 19th century romantic realistic novel (see Auerbach E, 2003[1946], pp. 324 456; Luhmann, 1986, pp. 12945; Bergmann, 1987; Stone, 1987, pp. 32936; Viederman, 1988, in Gaylin and Person, 1988, pp. 1114). To these ingredients one could add the following: sexual frustration, because it seems at least from the Brautbriefe that Freud and Martha did not sleep together before getting married; the intensity and depth of their feeling, reciprocal self-interrogation, intimacy and sexual longing which is so characteristic of romantic love (Giddens, 1991, pp. 3547; Kristeva, 1987; Girard, 2011); Freuds poverty, as well as Marthas; the differences between their cultural background; the religious issues; and, finally, the young age of Martha. And one is tempted to say that in their act of writing, even in the tactile, physical, secret act of sending or receiving, opening and reading their letters, they were trying to find a sort of written dialogic substitute, a surrogate in the absence of all those spoken and unspoken communications of their feelings so condensed through their brief conversations, and physical encounters, where only kissing each other was allowed. One might say that these letters are no different from those sent by other educated bourgeois couples in those days throughout Europe and outside. There is nevertheless certainly something remarkable in the correspondence between Freud and Martha. From the beginning, besides the way in which
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they open or close their letters, which would deserve a specific study, one is struck by the wealth of literary quotations they refer to. Due to the wellknown imprecision of Freuds quotations in particular, this must have caused more than one headache for the editors of the Brautbriefe! Those quotations, like the adjectives or nicknames used at the beginning and end of their letters, were chosen according to the particular emotional moment in which Freud and Martha found themselves.55 The poetry seemed to play an enhancing support for their emotions particularly when they met or after a new separation. I will return to the importance of those references and quotations for Freud as a psychoanalyst. It is as if all the statements concerning love that they had found in the poets and writers they had read since they were young had combined with their own, more or less, unconscious, primordial infantile and early adolescent love and sexual feelings ckert, and phantasies. Martha, for instance, had a particular passion for Ru an Orientalist and very interesting German and popular Romantic poet,56 from whom she sometimes gleaned inspiration to write her love poems to Freud. It is as if the literature helped them to acknowledge and better express what they felt, and at the same time give their feelings a particular cultural shape, mostly German, but not exclusively. Consider Freuds love of Tasso, Milton, Shakespeare, Byron, Dickens, late 18th century and 19th century so-called romantic love poetry and novels.57 At one point Freud quotes verses by the late 18th century Scottish poet R. Burns that Byron used as an epigraph for The Bride of Abydos (1813) (Fichtner et al., 2011, p. 514), and Freud refers to a sort of sadness that he felt at the time he read those verses and did not yet know Martha, and which came back to him; he could really understand the sadness through something similar that he found in Marthas feelings and verses (Freud to Martha, 9 July 1883; Fichtner et al., 2011, pp. 5134). Martha had similar experiences. At one moment, in the middle of one of their crises, she quotes the famous verses of Tristan (c.1200) from a modern German version that had been familiar to Freud since his adolescence, and which were rendered in modern German as There is no love without pain [Lieb kann nicht ohne Leiden sein; Tristan, 2003] (Martha to Freud, 26 August 1882; Fichtner et al., 2011, pp. 3267). The verses had sounded more mysterious to Martha when as an adolescent she had first read Tristan but, experiencing love and pain now, Martha could understand what those verses meant. Of course I could quote more of the sources used by Freud and Martha to better understand their love for each other. But what I have just said is
55 For instance, when Freud and Martha have to meet that year in Wandsbek in July 1882, their letters ckert, contain ever greater numbers of quotations from the love poems of B. Auerbach, Goethe, Ru Heine, Shakespeare, Wieland, etc. On more general subjects, from time to time, there are also quotations from Jewish culture. But I will come back to all this in a while. 56 ckert was also used by Schubert and Schumann, and also by G. Mahler as a librettist, for instance, Ru in his Kindertotenlieder. Martha, in sending some verse to Freud in a letter dated 26 June 1882, says that ckert [my beloved Ru ckert] (Fichtner et al., 2011, p. 181). they are from meines geliebten Ru 57 When necessary there will be references even to Biblical texts or, in the case of Freud, to a poet like Milton, besides of course the Shakespeare of the sonnets as well as the plays.
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enough to prove how the Brautbriefe is a wonderful and privileged example of de Rougemonts (1972, pp. 12631) fascinating although questionable thesis on the influence of mediaeval poetry and culture on the cultivated European bourgeois notions of love throughout the centuries and including the 19th century. Indeed, the German Romantic poets that Freud and Martha quoted were inspired by the medieval love poetry of the French Provenc anger. Although of course one has also to bear in als and the Minnes mind the historical and sociocultural differences between those old poems on love and the 19th century Romantic ones. Incidentally, de Rougemont makes of Tristan the core iconic poem to support his views!58 Even in the case of Freud and Martha, therefore, one is tempted to ask, along with Stone who echoes La Rochefoucauld (1987, p. 329; and de Rougemont, 1972): Did poetry invent romantic love, or love invent poetry?59 With Freud and Martha, I would not say it happened the way it did in Dantes Divina Commedia (1985[130712], p. 46), where Paolo and Francesca fall in love reading the poem Lancelot!60 But between the two of them, and between their feelings and passion for certain Romantic but not only Romantic poets, there was a remarkable connection. Yet the romantic, dreamlike, idealized atmosphere we detect in the letters I have just quoted changed into an at times tragicomic series of events, fears, accusations, reproaches, doubts, terrible uncertainties, self-accusations and self-scrutiny, despair, and sudden recovery of love and hope. All those contradictory feelings escalated, particularly in the case of Freud. The letters in which he expressed his feelings reveal a real, emotional, violent and potentially at times destructive Sturm [storm]. These letters became a desperate sort of performative writing intended to really shake Martha in order to, I would say, bend her to his will, to indelibly and almost physically stamp on her his need for total, absolute possession and obedience. As I said, these were all warning signals of a potential storm which then exploded. Of course, one has to think of die Trennung, which became much more painful than first imagined for both of them but particularly for Freud. There is no doubt that had they the chance to meet more often, to speak to each other at length and even share an affectionate kiss, as Martha later wrote to Freud with great common sense and patience (28 June 1883; Fichtner et al., 2011, p. 470), it would have helped if not to solve then at
58 I cannot of course go into detail here on, for instance, the similarities and the differences between the famous themes of the amor de lonh [love from a distance] of J. Rudel one of the most famous Provenc al troubadours who, we should not forget, wrote in and for an aristocratic milieu! (de Rougemont, 1972) and what could be called the amor de lonh of Freud and Martha. Incidentally, some of Rudels themes, as with those of many of the other troubadours just think, for example, of A. Daniel were very well known to the romantic German poets quoted in the correspondence between Freud and Marckert and Uhland etc tha (see the indexes in Fichtner!!) such as Auerbach, Goethe, Heine, Lenau, Ru who, fascinated by poetry of the Middle Ages, were deeply influenced by the troubadours through die Minnes anger [the Minnesingers] and direct readings and translations. 59 Stone seems to echo de Rougemonts views based on La Rochefoucaulds famous aphorism (1705, p. 50): Il y a des gens qui nauraient jamais et e amoureux, sils navaient jamais entendu parler damour [There are people who would never have been in love, if they had never heard talk of it] (La Rochefoucauld, 1791, p. 27). 60 Lancelot is a medieval romance in which the author describes the reciprocal falling in love of Sir Lancelot and Queen Guinevere.
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least to make sense of and diffuse the stormy waves of love, anger, hate, impotent fury, personal insecurity and irrational jealousy which at one point Freud started to discharge in his letters to Martha. One has nevertheless to remember that, before he met her, Freud seemed to have had only a flimsy infatuation for a young girl called Gisela, during the summer holidays in August 1872 when he was 16 years old. In reality, the attraction was to the girls mother, about whom he wrote a masterly psychological portrait to his friend Silberstein.61 Unfortunately, the documents at our disposal do not shed any light on Freuds private, emotional and sexual life during the ten years that followed (Jones, 1956; Eissler, 1971, pp. 2427; Gay, 1989a; Fichtner et al., 2011, pp. 4552). The availability of this complete edition of the Brautbriefe, edited ller and Grubrich-Simitis, will I am sure open an by Fichtner, Hirschmu entire new chapter on the psychoanalysis of Freuds character and intentions. While trying to avoid speculative interpretations, if one thinks about the total and nearly obsessive dedication to his studies and at the same time the financial difficulties in his personal life as a young student and researcher, one can conclude that this implied an intense and ready-toexplode emotional internal phantasy life; an internal life concerning primitive feelings, love and idealization of the loved one, as well as a persecutory fear of abandonment, fear of loss, nostalgia for the loved one, stimulated further by all the readings of poets. One could claim that meeting Martha, and Martha reciprocating his love as far as she could, made Freud believe in the possibility of the total fulfilment of his accumulated longing, at times so difficult to express in words, for an ideal and absolute love a love that he immediately declared to Martha. The complex internal and external reasons for his confessed insecurity (of course, not having had any relationship or girlfriend during all those years did not make things easier, as he himself acknowledged), can help us understand Freuds extreme declarations of love to Martha in his first letter.62,63 It is as if Freud found in Martha not only physical attractiveness but also the refuge for all his anxieties the anchor or safety net to which he had gekettet [chained] himself, to use one of his metaphors (Freud to Martha, 22 June 1883; Fichtner et al., 2011, p. 431). This is also poetically expressed he, by B. Auerbach in a poem about two lovers being one, Auf der Ho (1865), which Martha, responding to his need to feel constantly at one with her, mentioned in a letter to Freud in September 1882 (Fichtner et al., 2011, p. 346): We two are bound together [Wir beide sein verbunden] The
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See the letter from Freud to Silberstein dated Freiberg 4 September 1872 (Boehlich, 1990, pp. 1219).
Consider how Freud came back more than once, and at times in a very dramatic way, to this issue. For example, in his letter to Martha dated 23 June 1882 he writes: Ich sehe in deiner Liebe den einzigen festen Punkt in meinem Leben [I see in your love the only secure point in my life] (Fichtner et al., 2011, p. 107). And in a letter to Martha dated 7 July 1882 he writes: denn ich kann nicht leben ohne deine ganze volle ausschlieliche Liebe [for I cannot live without your total, complete, exclusive love] (Fichtner et al., 2011, p. 164).
63 Many of the letters already published by E. Freud (1960) concerning those issues should already be familiar to readers.
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poems rhyming scheme (internal as well as end rhyming) is based on -ein and sein; the word sein is the verb to be, and it is also, significantly, a possessive adjective/pronoun. Moreover, the word sein contains the component ein the German word for one which reinforces the idea of the two lovers being bound together, as one! (Martha to Freud, 8 September 1882; Fichtner et al., 2011, p. 421). Jones was, in the early 1950s, already speaking rightly of a relationship in which the goal was at times, particularly for Freud, fusion rather than union (Jones, 1956, p. 122). If there is a word that violently shakes Freuds writing like an emotional seismic upsurging, a basso continuo, throughout the whole first volume, condensing his anxious fear of losing Martha and his wish to fuse with her, it is the verb besitzen [to possess], also linked to the innumerable times he stresses that Martha must be his and only his.64 Freud writes: I have to possess you totally and to be the only one [Ich mu Dich ganz und alleine besitzen] (Freud to Martha, 29 August 1882; Fichtner et al., 2011, p. 332). There is no better evidence than this term for the emotional, even primitive, visceral feelings contained in the everyday language of the prepsychoanalytical Freud, which resurfaces in the later technical language of psychoanalysis; a resurfacing which has, in this case, been so distorted and obfuscated by the decision of Jones and Strachey to translate besetzung as cathexis and its variations since 1921 (Bettelheim, 1983; Ornston, 1985; Steiner, 1987). Incidentally, one could even say, to my mind, that Freuds absolute and total need to besitz [possess] Martha contained some aspects of what is nowadays called projective identification (Steiner, 1984). More or less a week after they kissed and considered themselves engaged, and Martha left Vienna, in a letter from Wandsbek dated 22 June 1882 where Martha calls Freud mein Geliebter [my beloved] and mein Einziger [my one and only] (Fichtner et al., 2011, pp. 978), she asks Freud if she can still maintain a friendship with two musical acquaintances: Max Meyer, a pianist and composer, who had collected her at Hamburg and whose songs she admired, and Fritz Wahle, a violinist. They were admirers of Martha and she had flirted with both before she met Freud, and, in Fritzs case, even after meeting Freud (as we will see). Freud knew both men.65 Max had asked Martha whether she could still be a sort of sister to him (Fichtner et al., 2011, p. 98). From that moment on, the storm of Freuds jealousy, mixed with his shyness, sense of inadequacy and insecurity, dominated nearly all the letters Freud wrote to Martha; these continued in a tragicomic crescendo until the moment when, around the middle of July, after having succeeded in finding some money to travel, Freud was able to
64 See for other uses of this verb the letters from Freud to Martha dated: 7 July 1882 (Fichtner et al., 2011, p. 165); 6 September 1882 (2011, pp. 3435); 5 October 1882 (2011, p. 366); 2 July 1883 (2011, p. 488). 65 Freud, for instance, tells Martha in a letter dated 22 June 1882 (Fichtner et al., 2011, p. 102) that Fritz is helping him receive her secret letters and that nobody else should know about these letters (2011, nberg and a brother of Fritz knew about Marthas and p. 104). Apart from Fritz, only Max, Scho Freuds secret liaison.
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visit Martha in Wandsbek and secretly saw her there for a few days. As we will see, Freud was often acutely self-aware post-factum and in particular after the emotional explosions that resulted in the distortion of his feelings and phantasies towards Martha. Indeed, at one point later on Freud wrote to Martha that: My phantasy is a bit sick and plays nasty tricks on me se Streiche] [Meine Phantasie ist ein wenig krank und spielt mir bo (8 August 1882; Fichtner et al., 2011, p. 265). Freud masterfully scrutinized and reproached himself and even tried sometimes to understand his rivals (Jones, 1956, pp. 11634; E. Freud, 1960, 1961). The most famous letter is the one dated 11 July 1882 in which Freud tries to explain to Martha the powerful hold that artists have over women, compared with that of poor scientists (Fichtner et al., 2011, p. 187). These letters can help us to better understand his later powers of analysis and introspection as a psychoanalyst. In a letter to Martha dated 30 June 1882 (Fichtner et al., 2011, p. 135), stere Tyrann], a thought Freud calls himself the gloomy tyrant [der du which is echoed affectionately by Martha in several letters: my beloved tyrant [mein geliebter tyrann] (Martha to Freud, 10 July 1882; Fichtner et al., 2011, p. 182); my tyrant [mein Tyrann] (Martha to Freud, 9 July 1883; Fichtner et al., 2011, p. 510). On other occasions he calls himself r Desa despot: You can see what sort of despot I am [Du siehst, was fu pot ich bin] (Freud to Martha, 8 July 1882; Fichtner et al., 2011, p. 173). At one point, to justify the strength of his desire to possess her and make her his own something which made her feel ill he acknowledged that this could be egoistisch [selfish] but concluded that if that were the case, love could be nothing else but egoistisch! He felt he had no more to add (Freud to Martha, 17 August 1882; Fichtner et al., 2011, p. 293). But, in spite of all those statements, at times Freud sounds like a sort of modern Pygmalion who could not bear that Martha the perfect idealized creature moulded by his phantasy revealed herself to be less than the perfect specimen. This is the undercurrent of the at times intolerable anxiety, appalling dread [die entsetzliche Angst] (Jones, 1956, p. 125) that we find even in the final letters in this first volume of the Brautbriefe. At times one has the impression that Freud would have liked Martha to be a sort of anatomical specimen that he could fix firmly and control securely under his microscope! It is a complex mixture of a patriarchal attitude towards Martha, reinforced by the personal difficulties in Freuds character. In Freuds relentless attempt to control Martha he writes: But until now I wanted to make of you something different [Aber ich wollte bisher was anderes aus Dir machen] (Freud to Martha, 30 June 1883; Fichtner et al., 2011, p. 477, my italics). At times, besides the tragic Othello one is reminded of another tragicomic lover Ariostos Orlando Furioso, whose jealousy was such that he could not bear the pain of knowing or seeing any trace that revealed the love between Medoro and his beloved Angelica.66
66 See Ludovico Ariostos Orlando Furioso (1964[1532], Canto 23, pp. 5901). In Canto 24, Ariosto tells the reader that love is nothing but insanity (p. 600). Of course, this view has a long ancient Greek and Latin tradition behind it which seems in one way or another to have percolated through to Freud when he mentions that his phantasy is a bit sick. See above.
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Freuds often patronizing and infantilizing style of writing to Martha, when in the grip of his anxieties, runs through the whole first volume of the Brautbriefe and should be studied in detail. It could lead to a better understanding of the continuity and gap between the young Freuds approach to woman (Freud as a young man, lover, husband, and then father) and Freud as a psychoanalyst. Indeed, what I have just stated could even lead to a better understanding of the famous letter Freud wrote to Martha on 15 November 1883; this is the letter referred to by Jones (1956, p. 137), published in full by E. Freud (1961, pp. 8991), and studied by others, in which Freud, commenting on J. Stuart Mills pamphlet on women that he had translated, criticizes the excessively liberal views of the English philosopher, and tells Martha that her role, like that of women in general, is to be and to remain a good housewife.67 But let us go back now to Max and Fritz and see where it all seems to have started and understand what Freud wanted to make out of Martha during those first months. Max was the first to have upset Freud, making him suspicious when he read what Martha had written about the musician and knowing the power of his charm over her as an artist (Freud to Martha, 23 June 1882; Fichtner et al., 2011, p. 106). For a while Freud seemed to cope, to the extent that he wrote to her magnanimously that of course nberg (the fianc Max could be her brother, and Scho e of Minna, Marthas little sister, whom he was getting to know) and even Fritz they could all be her dear friends. Freud was proud that so many people loved Martha, even though, for example, he was aware of the warmth of Marthas relationship with Fritz (Freud to Martha, 26 June 1882; Fichtner et al., 2011, pp. 1156). To enable us to better understand what was going on, the editors publish a letter from that period, sent by Fritz to Martha, which sounds a little too warm and even somewhat provocative towards Herr Doktor, as Fritz ironically referred to Freud. One has to say that there was still a fire burning under the ashes between Fritz and Martha, at least as far as Fritz was concerned, because Fritz openly declares to Martha how much I love you [wie sehr lieb ich Dich habe], although he acknowledges in his letter that the word love is a little too dangerous (Fritz to Martha, end of June 1882; Fichtner et al., 2011, p. 130). In so many letters Freud calls Martha Marthchen, mein Marthchen es Marthchen [my sweet little Martha], [Matty, my Matty], mein su es M mein holdes Madchen [my sweet girl], mein su adchen [my sweet e Martha [my sweet Martha], mein su es Kind [my girl], meine su sweet child]. For Freud this was not merely a rhetorical device; it seems he really did feel that Martha was like a child he could mould as he wanted.
67 It is indeed interesting that Freud mentions Stuart Mills work already in the first volume of the Brautbriefe (Freud to Martha, 18 July 1882; Fichtner et al., 2011, p. 212). In the same letter he imagines a future when, having Martha all for himself, she will have to sit on his knees in the evenings after finishing work and read for him aloud. The tone is affectionate but the patriarchal and patronizing attitude cannot be denied, particularly in the words mu Du immer auf meinen Knien sitzen [you will have always to sit on my knees].
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Suddenly, however, the tone of Freuds letters change. He reveals to Martha that he knew that Fritz and Martha exchanged kisses before and after the famous promenade that she and Freud took in Kahlenberg, when Freud experienced such strong feelings for her that he found it almost impossible to stop pronouncing her name and holding her hand (Freud to Martha, 4 July 1882; Fichtner et al., 2011, pp. 14950). Fritz told Freud, which means Martha had been silent about this. Freud hoped that when they next met they would be able to speak about what had remained until then unanswered [ohne Antwort] his uncertainty concerning Marthas love for him, which he felt did not have the same intensity as his own for her, and in particular the fact that when he was still a Fremder [stranger], he had already started to feel so much for her, without her realizing (Fichtner et al., 2011, p. 149). At times Freud revealed difficulty in understanding that Martha was not a figment of his imagination and that she might have had her own private life, somewhat more flirtatious than the one Freud had during the years of his adolescence and as a young man, and a need for her own time and space in which to feel and react to Freuds love (although, as we have seen, she was in reality very quick and passionate in her response to Freuds love for her). Freuds anger and frustration were unpredictable. His anger could suddenly explode in the most banal letters about the everyday, as if he was persecuted by his jealousy. When Freud was in the midst of one of his storms, it would appear suddenly in his letters as if he has been possessed by a sort of obsessive angst, which was superbly expressed using a stylistic register that sounded both tragic and comic at the same time. Just think about what he writes to Martha, referring to the kisses she and Fritz exchanged: but if you come back, I want to kiss off your sacred lips every trace of the alien [aber wenn Du kommst, will ich von ssen] (Freud to Martha, Deinen heiligen Lippen jede fremde Spur wegku 4 July 1882; Fichtner et al., 2011, p. 153, Freuds italics). This passionate statement appears in a letter to Martha, after a few paragraphs in which he quietly reports to Martha his meetings with her brother Eli in Vienna and with his own family and so on. The statement seems marvellously condensed, as if Freud were a romantic passionate character in a novel, or a classical opera, expressing his passionate and jealous suffering for his absolute love. There is also something comic in all this At one point, Freud compares Fritz to Goethes Werther, but in reality Freud himself seemed to be a sort of Werther (Freud to Martha, 4 July 1882; Fichtner et al., 2011, p. 153). Note the choice of words the two writers used to describe the lips of their beloved: Freud refers here to Marthas lips as sacred [heiligen]; Goethe (1881[1774], p. 34) describes Charlottes lips as alive [lebendigen]! Two days later, in stressing that Martha should understand that she belongs to him, Freud even resorts to using Napoleons famous statement when he was crowned King of Italy in 1805: Woe to him who touches it [Guai a chi la tocca]!68
68 When Napoleon was crowned King of Italy in 1805, the famous mediaeval corona ferrea [iron crown] was put on his head and he is supposed to have claimed: Dio me lha data. Guai a chi la tocca [God gave it to me. Woe to him who touches it] (Perfetti, 1993, p. 48).
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Things started to get even worse. Freud wanted to come to Wandsbek after 15 July to hear Martha say, in her own voice, that she loved him and only him. He did not ask her to break her friendship with Fritz, but he needed always to establish the truth he knew Fritz loved her. nberg tried to help his friends, Freud and Fritz, to clarify matters by Scho arranging a meeting between them in a cafe in Vienna. Freud had read the letters Martha and Fritz had exchanged. At the cafe, Fritz tried to calm Freud; he even wrote a letter to Martha in Freuds presence in order to reassure Freud. But in this letter Fritz addressed Martha as my dearest Marty and expressed his undying love for her. Freud was furious and tore the letter to pieces. Fritz left the cafe, totally mortified. Freud and nberg followed him outside with the intention of calming him down, Scho but Fritz broke down in tears (Fichtner et al., 2011, pp. 1656). Freud felt moved, and escorted Fritz home. In this same letter, Freud explains to Martha why Fritz, although engaged to somebody else, still loves her. And, with one of his typical coups de g enie, he writes a brilliant analysis (although exceeded in its brilliance by what he will write later on as a psychoanalyst) in which he states that contradictions cannot be tolerated in Logik [logic] but can happily coexist in feelings. One cannot ask artists to be coherent because they have no reason to submit [unterwerfen] their internal life [inneres Leben] to the strict control of reason [strengen Kontrolle des Verstandes] (Fichtner et al., 2011, p. 167). Whether Freud himself was in control is another matter. A day later, after his habitual professions of love for Martha (Freud to Martha, 8 July 1882; Fichtner et al., 2011, pp. 1723), he started dismantling Fritzs character and forbade Martha kategorisch (categorically) to answer any letters in which Fritz mentioned his love or called her meine Martha [my Martha]. At one point, after having stated that Fritz needs to be treated strictly [bedarf einer strengen Kur] (Fichtner et al., 2011, p. 173), he writes that Martha should not mention Freuds wishes to Fritz. But he wanted to see all of Fritzs letters. He insists again and again that she should not allow a friend to call her my Martha, my dear Martha [meine Martha, meine geliebte Martha]. The reason, Freud claims, is that: It no longer makes the right impression when I call you that [es macht nicht mehr den rechten Eindruck, wenn ich Dich so nenne] (Fichtner et al., 2011, p. 174). Freud met Fritz again in Vienna. But his anxiety remained, to the extent that on 11 July 1882, in a letter in which he calls Martha my most beloved and unique girl, and criticizes himself for his earlier outburst and harsh way he treated Martha, Freud describes himself wandering through Vienna at night for hours on end, his mind full of worries and thoughts concerning Marthas letters that he frames as a trilogy You, Wandsbek and our future [an Dich, an Wandsbek und unsere Zukunft] (Fichtner et al., 2011, p. 186). The letter ends with the famous statement quoted by Jones (1956, p. 125) and others ever since, on the existence of a general enmity between artists and us workers engaged in the detail of scientific work [eine genenstlern und uns Arbeitern im Detail der relle Feindschaft zwischen den Ku
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Wissenschaft] (Fichtner et al., 2011, p. 187). In this confession regarding his limitations as a scientist, Freud betrays his sense of inferiority that artists possess all the keys necessary to access womens hearts, whereas scientists have to stay outside the castle and are lucky if they can find a single key. In spite of all Marthas reassurances Freud must have still have been struggling to find the right key to unlock the door to her heart when, a few days before taking the train to Wandsbek to visit her, he reminded Martha, half in jest and half in earnest, that in our old mother tongue [in unserer alten Muttersprache] her name meant bitteres [bitter, or sour] (Freud to Martha, 13 July 1882; Fichtner et al., 2011, p. 195). He seemed not to realize Marthas right to have had some friends before she met him friends and flirtations which could not have been given up after only meeting Freud once. But had Martha really been so bitter or sour with him? A few days before the storm had started, and still unaware of Freuds jealousy, anxiety and anger, she wrote a letter to him (Martha to Freud, 24 June 1882) in which she referred to herself as a Ding [thing] of no importance, and passionately declared to Freud that: I can only love you very much, indeed quite terribly, if you are content with that [ich kann Dich nur sehr, ja ganz schrecklich lieb haben, wenn Du damit zufrieden bist] (Fichtner et al., 2011, p. 111). Martha wrote that on reading what he told her about Max: I couldnt help but cry a little [mute schnell ein bichen weinen]. And on looking at his photograph she felt a little frightened because Freuds eyes seemed to her so terribly severe and serious [so furchtbar streng und ernst] (Martha to Freud, 26 June 1882; Fichtner et al., 2011, p. 116). She went on writing to Freud with enormous affect, quoting verses from ckert [meines geliebten Ru ckert], informing him about my beloved Ru her life in Wandsbek, promising total secrecy about his letters, describing to him with great sensitivity one of her dreams, relating how marvellous it had been when in the dream they were back together looking into each others eyes and holding hands. Flirting mischievously, Martha adds that in the dream, and in her phantasy [Phantasie], they did something but I do not say what [das sag ich aber nicht] (Martha to Freud, 28 June 1882; Fichtner et al., 2011, p. 126). In the same letter, as if intuitively foreseeing perhaps what could follow, she tells Freud in her so gently articulated style that he has to accept her as she is, sometimes unfortunately a bit silly, not very clever, like a lamb, and has nothing, and he calls her Marty [manchmal leider ein bichen dumm, wenig geistreich, ein bichen Lammnatur und hat nichts und er nennt sie Marthchen] (Fichtner et al., 2011, p. 127). Of course, one could argue that she was deliberately undermining herself, adopting the guise of the stereotypical obedient passive little girl and fianc ee in order to please and calm Freud. But, as we will see, she could be firm with Freud on certain matters, reminding him of the boundaries concerning herself and her affections for her family that he must not overstep. If there is a single term that to my mind characterizes Marthas attempt to deal with and balance her emotions and those of Freud, thinking by
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contrast of what I have said about his explosive absoluteness, his at times impatient, tyrannical, anxious and voracious need to besitz [possess] her, and try to make of her what he wanted, it is this term: ein bichen [a little]. This gently but firmly emerges from Marthas letters even later on, at very critical moments. It works not only as a rhetorical artifice behind which Martha could repair herself, but also as a means of taming Freud, of bringing him back to reality or, to use a contemporary psychoanalytical expression, to contain him. Ein bichen started working as a sort of refrain in her letters or, so to speak, a rhetorical mole that would gradually, with great difficulty but at the same time gently and firmly, find its way into Freuds mind and emotions. I am thinking particularly of when Martha started asking Freud to have ein bichen Geduld [a little patience] with her, for her feelings, etc.69 Having said that, when confronted with and shocked by Freuds feelings about Marthas relationship with Fritz, and his relentless howling accusations, she did not question the perfection of their love and loyalty to each other, or his need for total frankness a need that she had, according to Freud, nevertheless ignored. She claimed she did not deserve the horrible outflow of misunderstandings expressed in Freuds letters. She said there had not been enough time in Vienna to explain everything to him; he was allowing his behaviour to be guided and dictated by other peoples statements about her. She said her love for him was absolute, he was everything for her (Fichtner et al., 2011, pp. 1778). And, like a true romantic heroine, at the end of her letter she even tells him that if einmal [one day] he no longer wants her, she will be suicidal.
If you if you if you if you you you you [Wenn Du wenn Du wenn Du wenn Du Du Du Du ] (Freud to Martha, 19 October 1882; Fichtner et al., 2011, p. 379) You terrible man I will be an Agnes for you, not a Dora, not a child-wife. [Du schrecklicher Mann. Ich will Dir eine Agnes sein und keine Dora, kein child-wife.] (Martha to Freud, 21 October 1882; Fichtner et al., 2011, p. 382)
After 16 July 1882 they managed to meet in Wandsbek where Freud stayed for a few days. The letters written in the days prior to Freuds arrival are a crescendo of poetic quotations. In a letter to Martha dated 14 July 1882 (Fichtner et al., 2011, p. 201), Freud quotes a marvellous passage of verse from Shakespeares play Twelfth Night, or What You Will, beginning Journeys end in lovers meeting. (Shakespeare, 1994[159096]) Nobody except a few friends were aware of Freuds arrival and secret stay in Wandsbek. Freud even had the chance to go to Hamburg and pay tribute to the statue of our great Lessing [unseren groen Lessing] (Freud to Martha, 18 July 1882; Fichtner et al., 2011, p. 208). They wrote
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See, for instance, the letters from Martha to Freud (Fichtner et al., 2011, pp. 260, 304, 480). Copyright 2013 Institute of Psychoanalysis
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to each other even on those days! They met on the streets but above all in lz, as it was called by the the silent park [den stillen Park], or Geho locals, where Martha had previously imagined walking with Freud, watching the squirrels, hanging from his arm so heavily that he had to pull her along, or sitting together on the grass reading to each other (Martha to Freud, 7 July 1882; Fichtner et al., 2011, pp. 1612). Freud and Martha managed to arrive at an understanding concerning Fritzs and Marthas behaviour and Freuds torment and jealousy. But, above all, it was an opportunity to embrace, and kiss each other again, which in the end seemed to be the language that helped them find peace and contentment more easily and better than any spoken word. Consider the following example. In a letter dated 27 July 1882, the day before Freud returned to Vienna, in an ecstatic, lyrical mood, Martha calls Freud: My beloved, my one and only, my Sigi! [Mein Geliebter Einziger, mein Sigi!] (Fichtner et al., 2011, p. 221). At one point, she feels so inspired she even quotes the Talmud of Babylon, as well as Schiller and other poets. She reminds Freud that earlier that day my beloved kissed me so often and so passionately [mein Geliebter hat mich heut so oft und so rmisch geku t], and she tells him that on her way home she was still so stu excited that people around her thought she had been drinking champagne. Freud, in a more formal, classical mood, later compares himself and Marlz, as if it were a sort of replica of tha to Adam and Eve alone in the Geho the Garden of Eden (Freud to Martha, 14 August 1882; Fichtner et al., 2011, p. 282). It is of course impossible to describe in its entirety the profusion of renewed love and promises, and Freuds remorse for having hurt Martha, that is expressed in the letters surrounding Freuds trip to Wandsbek. But a few examples can give an idea of the tone of their correspondence at that time. With a good sense of humour, Freud refers to his tirades against Martha as his Strafpredigt [punitive sermon] (Freud to Martha, 18 July 1882; Fichtner et al., 2011, p. 208). And in a letter written from Vienna on his return from Wandsbek, Freud writes: How differently I write and think now, than before I kissed you in Wandsbek. As I promised you, I will be your servant in life and your leader, your guide, if you ask for my prober, als bevor tection [Wie ganz anders schreibe und denke ich jetzt daru ich Dich in Wandsbek gekut. Wie ich versprochen, will ich Dein Diener hrer, wo Du nach meiner Stu tze rufst] sein im Leben [] und Dein Fu (Freud to Martha, 29 July 1882; Fichtner et al., 2011, p. 231). But the peace between them did not last, despite their reciprocal promise, made in Wandsbek, of total clarity and honesty concerning every letter they would write to or receive from Fritz and Max and every meeting they would have with them. At one point, Freud even threatened Martha that he would end their relationship if she did not put an end to her friendship with Fritz (Jones, 1956, p. 127).70 There were of course moments of renewed passion and dreamlike states communicated by letter as, for instance, in the letter in which Freud imagines
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Jones is quoting the letters dated 5 August 1882 and 5 July 1885 in which Freud hints at this threat. Int J Psychoanal (2013) 94
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their future together, when Martha is his and his alone and she takes his surname and becomes his teure Hausfrau [dear housewife], nota bene! They wrote about the fruitful life they would have together, for themselves and for others, till we have to close our eyes in the eternal sleep [bis wir ssen zum ewigen Schlaf] as Freud wrote to Martha die Augen schlieen mu on 4 August 1882 (Fichtner et al., 2011, pp. 24950). And one has to say that the life Freud went on to share with Martha later on matched in many ways, at least for a long time, the life imagined in this letter. It is during that time, on 18 August 1882, that Freud, revealing again his enormous talents as a writer, wrote to Martha one of the most moving letters (already reproduced in full in Freud E, 1960, p. 29; 1961, pp. 445) concerning their future, in which he comments again on their poverty. He imagines somebody asking them: What is your dowry? [Wass bringt ihr dazu mit], to which they reply: We have nothing but our love for each other [Nichts als wir einander Lieb haben]. He imagines their little house which, because of their poverty, comprises just two or three little rooms, and he describes in detail and with such tenderness their unpretentious furniture. One could call it a sort of modest Biedermeier-style interior. However, their daydreams could be escapist: the reality was quite different. Beside the tragicomic fury and jealousy of Fritz and Max which continues during the following months, something else was gradually emerging that would further complicate their relationship, creating new tensions and emotional ups and downs, and leading to another wave of ferocious and hurtful storms. Freud and Martha had to wait until the beginning of September 1882 to see each other again, in Vienna. At one point, Martha wrote to Freud that there was a chance she would not be able to see him before the winter. During the whole of August it was as if Freud was going through a process of self-scrutiny, pointing out with torment how distant, impotent and really desperate he felt because of the disproportion between the love he felt for Martha and what she felt for him; he expressed his constant fear of losing her, complaining about his miserable status and comparing himself to poor Mr. Dick [dem armen Mr. Dick] in Charles Dickenss novel David Copperfield (Freud to Martha, 5 August 1882; Fichtner et al., 2011, pp. 2524). Marthas patient reassurances, her understanding of the enormous stress Freud was under because of his professional work, emerge in her letters, at times through a sensitive use of a more direct spoken way of expressing herself to accentuate the immediacy of her tenderness, devotion and wish to be close to Freud, almost caressing him sometimes with her words: Is that not what we said, my beloved? How do you feel? Dont you remember? You see my darling, we You, my beloved At times she asks him for a little respect [ein bichen Respekt], the same respect that she has for him, affectionately reminding him in closing one of her letters: We must be patient a little longer, adieu for today, my sweet treasure. A greetssen wir ing and a kiss from your Martha [Noch ein bichen Geduld mu r heut mein su er Schatz. Gru und Ku von deiner halt haben, adieu fu Martha] (Martha to Freud, 7 August 1882; Fichtner et al., 2011, p. 260). The alliteration in the German repetition of s (ss or ), as well as the vocal u increases the emotions and affects that Martha wanted to convey.
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Feeling so poor and experiencing all the ups and downs of his medical career did not help Freud (Freud to Martha, 1 August 1882; Fichtner et al., 2011, p. 239). They discussed money and savings many times during those months because they had even created a sort of jointly held cash box to cover their everyday expenses trips, presents, the cost of their letter paper, and even the postage. Gradually, however, something else started to emerge. It is obvious from the first letter in which they seriously considered a life together the letter from Freud to Martha dated 15 June 1882 that Freud felt there could be difficulties with her family due to his financial status, Marthas family situation, and, as in the case of so many young women of her social condition, the fact that Martha was expected to find a husband who could guarantee her financial security, not to mention the problems related to the orthodox Judaism of Martha and her family, as we will see in a while. It shows the strength of Marthas character, her independence and courage (despite the stereotypical image of the obedient little girl that she often projects in her letters71 ), that she chose Freud because she has fallen in love with him. He was her Der Wissenschaft Mann or Der Herr Doktor, the Man of Science, Mr Doctor, who had such great ideals but was penniless, with an uncertain future ahead of him. Their sometimes adolescent quarrelling about Max and Fritz was one thing, but Marthas mother and brother Eli soon presented a problem of an entirely different magnitude. They were not rivals in his courtship of Martha but, for want of a better word, enemies. These external factors started to interfere with Freuds desired union with Martha, helping to fuel his compulsive fear of losing her. For, as he once wrote in a letter to Martha, only when you are mine will my life begin. These obstacles were not only due to the distortions of his Phantasie, to use Freuds expression, already so rich in its future psychoanalytical implications, but his Phantasie played a role in mobilizing and fuelling the emotions of the new dramatic storm. In spite of her illustrious background, one should not forget that Martha, although she was protected by her brother Eli, was without a father, a circumstance which seemed to facilitate Freuds renewed tyrannical outbursts and demands, as Eli soon became the target of some of his violent outbursts. Freud (and perhaps Martha too) was aware that Marthas mother Emmeline, who was not so despotic as Freuds mother72 (M. Freud, 1957, p. 14; Behling, 2005, p. 17), already suspected something about their relationship. She did not like them being together too often and she told
71 Consider, for example, the passage in this marvellous letter in which, in a very seductive but also sincere way, because of her admiration for the man of science, she imagines sitting near Freud in order to learn from him silent, m auschenstill [like a little mouse], listening to him and what he is about to read to her. But one has also to point out that only a few lines earlier in this letter Martha has asked Freud to treat her with ein bichen von dem Respekt [a little respect], which I have already mentioned the same respect she has had for him since meeting him (Martha to Freud, 7 August 1882; Fichtner et al., 2011, p. 260). 72 One should read the portrait that M. Freud made of his grandmother Amalia, stressing the despotic, harsh, fighting nature of a Galician Jew one of those women who, later on, could be found defending the Warsaw ghetto during the Jewish uprising under the Nazi occupation, he added (Freud M, 1957, p. 1214).
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Minna, according to Freud: We seem to get on too well [denn wir passten zu gut zueinander] (Freud to Martha, 18 July 1882; Fichtner et al., 2011, p. 210). Freud was much more explicit later on about Emmelines possible knowledge of their secret relationship and how dangerous that could be (Freud to Martha, 29 August 1882; Fichtner et al., 2011, p. 332). It is more than possible, in spite of Joness reservations about some of her late decisions which complicated Freuds and Marthas engagement, that Emmeline knew who Freud was through Eli, Minna and others, and was thinking of the social and financial risks inherent in a possible engagement of her young daughter to such a bright young man, full of promise, but also debts, and without a proper job, and that she was therefore trying to protect Martha. Martha came back to Vienna and to Freud escorted by Eli in early September. They both had to resume their usual tricks in order to meet. Letters, written every day and sometimes more than once a day, were exchanged through friends or sent to false addresses. They met mainly on the streets or the squares of Vienna where they shared furtive kisses. Occasionally they met at the home of one or the other, faking a sort of formal friendship. It is true that from the first of September Freud was able to see Martha occasionally, but always chastely, in his little room at the hospital where he was living.73 Freud began to attack the deep relationship Martha had with her family, particularly with her mother and Eli. Minna was spared this assault because Freud felt she was a sort of understanding ally and he often corresponded with her in a very affectionate way. Freud wrote bluntly to Martha on 6 September that her mother is splendid, but a stranger to me, and she probably always will feel like a stranger to me [ist blendend, aber fremd, und wird mirs wohl immer bleiben] (Fichtner et al., 2011, p. 344). The campaign had started and it would be difficult to stop because Freud felt that Martha was too weak, acquiescent and obliging with her family, and in his jealous fear and blindness he seemed not to realize at first how badly he could hurt Martha. At the same time, in constantly reminding her that she now belonged to him, it was as if Freud intuitively foresaw something something that would pose a grave threat to their relationship. But his reproaches and fury usually exploded rather unpredictably. Take, for example, the letter to Martha dated 19 October 1882 (Fichtner et al., 2011, p. 377), which starts with Freud telling Martha how busy he is with his job, put under constant pressure by his boss at the hospital where he is working. He goes on to peacefully inform Martha of his meeting with Breuer and tells her for the first time about the fascinating case of Bertha Pappenheim. Then, suddenly changing both the subject and the rhetorical, emotional tone of his writing, he complains angrily to Martha about what he has heard from his sisters
73 In a letter dated 25 September 1882, Freud discusses several projects and even envisages, after finishing his training, becoming a doctor, going to England, the Americas or Australia if he cannot earn enough in Austria, with Martha joining him after a year or two to live with him in one of those countries (Fichtner et al., 2011, p. 358).
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concerning the way she is being treated at home by her mother and brother: she is forbidden to do this, to do that, to learn English; they do not give her money to buy books, and so on. In his fury Freud writes wenn du [if you] six times in the space of just 14 lines, and uses the pronoun du [you] nine times. It was as if Freud wanted to forcibly compel Martha to listen to him. The forceful repetition of the words wenn [if] and du [you], and the dark colour of the u seems to express an emotionally charged and menacing energy, as if, so to speak, Freud wanted to perforate the letter in order to stamp his thoughts on Marthas mind, to pin her down and persuade her that she was no longer a worthless child who must keep quiet about everything unpleasant and obey her relatives. If she does not understand this, if she does not react against her family, then she will lose all claims to their being together, Freud concludes; he has had enough of her feebleness. And then he attacks Eli. He was not the good young man Martha thought he was, Freud argued. This was merely the opening shot in his campaign against Eli; there would be many others, to the extent that the situation became so difficult between Freud and Eli that, a few months later, Freud refused to attend Elis marriage to his own sister Anna.74 Well, at this point we see Martha reacting without fear, defending her dignity and acting with outstanding maturity.75 She had already kindly reminded Freud on 25 September (Fichtner et al., 2011, p. 355) that she was keine Freifrau, in other words, she was not the mistress of her own household or a free woman she was still bound to her family and could not, therefore, do exactly as she wanted. On 14 October, having read all that Freud had said against her family, she rose to their defence, telling Freud, gently but firmly, that if he loved her: You should at least like my family a little [mut Du auch meine Leute wenigstens ein bichen lieb haben] (Marthas italics), and not judge them so harshly, so coldly and rigidly, as after all they dont deserve it [sie nicht so hart, so kalt und streng beurteilen, wie sies doch nicht verdienen (Marthas italics] (Fichtner et al., 2011, p. 372). On 21 October 1882, confronted with Freuds latest outburst, Martha wrote a letter that ranks, to my mind, among the very best in the entire first volume. Besides her dignity, she reveals an outstanding strength in her feelings and thoughts, given that she is only 21 years old at the time of writing:
On what basis should I be persuaded by you that my relatives are tyrants? [] And would you now have me love you without any regard? No my dear, [such love, without regard] does not exist, at least for me. For me, love and regard are the same. (Fichtner et al., 2011, pp. 3812)
74 The problems between Freud and Eli were also due to the way Freud thought Eli had behaved with his young brother Alexander. He wrote a letter on this subject to Emmeline that would also be read by Eli!! (S. Freud to E. Bernays, 25 October 1882; Fichtner et al., 2011, pp. 5467]. In the Brautbriefe one can find a letter written later on to Martha dated 18 March 1883 (Fichtner et al., 2011, p. 416) in which Freud again accuses Martha of allowing herself to be tyrannized by Eli, who had by then become one of his worst enemies. 75 See, for instance, the very moving and revealing letter to Freud dated 12 December 1882 (Fichtner et al., 2011, p. 411) in which she declares her total devotion and dependence on him.
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Martha concludes the letter with a sort of epigraphic statement which, in my opinion, beautifully condenses the kind of future relationship she will have with Freud and the fundamental supportive presence she will be for him, confirming the wisdom of the proverb that behind every great man there is a great woman: You horrible man I will be your Agnes, not a Dora or a childwife] (my italics)76 [Du schrecklicher Mann, she exclaims, earnestly and affectionately at the same time. Ich will Dir eine Agnes sein und keine Dora, kein childwife]. Freud and Martha were of course continuing to meet because they were both in Vienna at this time, but that did not stop Freud complaining to Martha in writing that she did not love him as much as he loved her, and that she preferred her family to him and his family: Of course, you love me too, as a dear young girl can love; but you remain a Bernays; my relatives mean nothing to you [Du hast mich gewi auch lieb, wie so ein teures M adchen kann; aber Du bist eine Bernays geblieben; meine Leute bedeuten Dir nichts]. Freud goes on: You should not have let yourself be treated like a weak-willed child, and you cannot deny that you have been treated like one. You are Elis domestic slave, and you tremble when he beckons you [Du solltest Dich nicht als willenloses Kind behandeln lassen, und Du kannst nicht leugnen, da man Dich so behandelt. Du bist Elis Haussklavin und zitterst, wenn er winkt]. And then the finale, in which one sees the desperate Pygmalion at work: You will, in any case, become how I want you [Du wirst doch werden, wie ich will].77 He continues: Do not delude yourself. Elise [one of Marthas friends] and Eli and Fritz [Freud, in his rage, throws even Fritz into the mix] and whats their names, they are all dead for you, you belong only to me and you know now that I am not going to share you [Denn t ausche Dich nicht, Elise und Eli und Fritz und wie sie alle heien, sind tot rst ganz mir, und da ich nicht teilen will, r Deine Empfindung, Du geho fu hast Du erfahren]. Perhaps Freud felt that something very dangerous and painful was about to happen. On 24 October 1882 (Fichtner et al., 2011, p. 385), Martha informed Freud of her mothers plan to leave Vienna and move back to Wandsbek (Hamburg) the following summer. In her letter, Martha sounds desperate: her relationship with Freud is now threatened. She wants to tell her mother everything but she cannot do that. With hindsight, I think, one can say that whatever reasons Emmeline has for returning with her daughters to Hamburg, one cannot deny that she also wanted to protect Martha against getting too involved with Freud: she was aware of his brilliant mind and his
76 Martha is referring here to the female characters in Dickenss novel David Copperfield, a copy of which was, incidentally, the first present Freud gave to Martha (see p. 886). She seemed to have read the book very well! Dora was the weak, infantile young woman whom David married; Agnes had been his wise, stable and reliable friend since his childhood and he goes on to marry her after Doras death. See also Fichtner et al., 2011, p. 382, note 2. 77 Freuds patronizing, Pygmalionesque attitude is also evident in many later letters. See, for example, what he wrote to Martha on 30 June 1883 (Fichtner et al., 2011, p. 477): Aber ich wollte bisher was anderes aus Dir machen [But until now I wanted to make something else out of you]!
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charm, but also the fact that he was penniless and burdened with debt. For Freud, it must have felt like the realization of his worst nightmare: despite his efforts, Martha was falling deeper into the clutches of her relatives. The young couple would now have to face the prospect of another this time very uncertain separation, with all the endless added frustrations that this entailed. The resentment Freud felt towards Marthas family, and of course towards Martha too, could only increase. What followed in the next months could, in some ways, be anticipated, knowing as we do now a bit more about Freud and Martha. However, in October 1882 the date of the Bernays departure from Vienna had not yet been fixed. Of course, as with previous instances of Freuds fury, it was followed by a period of reconciliation and passionate affection,78 made possible perhaps only because both were still in Vienna and able to see each other. Of the two lovers, it was Martha who was the more composed and thoughtful, and the more psychologically aware of their difficulties. More than once she pointed out to Freud the difficulty of seeing each other only for a maximum of two hours, and in having to express and discuss in such a short time everything that mattered to them. In a letter to Freud dated 27 November 1882 she stresses that the best, the warmest feelings that we r einander have for each other remain unspoken [das Beste, das wir fu empfinden, das W armste doch ungesagt bleibt] (Fichtner et al., 2011, p. 407). Unspoken, but certainly felt to the extent that in one of the most amusing and telling letters of those weeks, with his medical-doctor preoccupations coming to the fore, Freud started to worry about the health of Martha, who got so erregt [excited] by his kisses that she could not sleep (15 November 1882; Fichtner et al., 2011, p. 397). He noticed the so delicate blue rings around your beautiful eyes [so zarte blaue nen Augen] and was prepared to hold back, to behave Ringe um die scho more like a friend than a lover because the health and the physical fitness and strength of his beloved girl is dearer to me than the joy of caressing ck, den zarten Leib zu your delicate body [ist mir teurer als das Glu liebkosen]. Finally, at Emmelines home in Vienna on 26 December 1882, Freud and Martha announced their engagement to Emmeline and Eli, there with nberg (Minna was in Sicily) (Freud to Martha, Anna, and also to Scho 27 December 1882; Fichtner et al., 2011, p. 412). This probably further reinforced Emmelines resolve to leave Vienna and take her family back to her native country. During the months that followed, until Martha, now often addressed by Freud as my little Princess [meine Prinzesschen], left Vienna for Wandsbek, the letters very often bear witness to Freuds anxious anger
78 See, for instance, the closing remarks in the letter from Martha to Freud dated 18 November 1882, in which as if she had read Catulluss Carmina (1955, pp. 301), the ancient Roman poet and his poem on the thousand kisses and then a hundred he wanted from his lover Lesbia she writes that she kisses Freud a thousand times, but then she coquettishly adds that perhaps 990 times are enough (Fichtner et al., 2011, pp. 399400)!
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towards Martha and her family. At the time Freud had started working with Meynert who would play quite a role in his future decisions concerning his career in the field of neurology and psychiatry (Freud to Martha, 7 May 1883; Fichtner et al., 2011, p. 427). But at one point he writes to Martha that the study of the human brain no longer interests him. It is as if we are witness to a tormenting pang of contemptuous despair that embitters Freud but also affects Martha. For me, your importance lies in your name Martha not in the word Bernays, Freud writes provocatively to Martha on 3 March 1883 (Fichtner et al., 2011, p. 415), before adding that her mother and Eli have very little in them that connects with that famous name. In so writing, Freud more or less consciously admits to a sense of personal inferiority towards the background of Marthas important family (ibid., p. 415). On 21 February 1883, Freud wrote a letter to Minna that the Editors have not included but which was published by E. Freud (1960, pp. 368; 1961, pp. 524), in which, in a stylistically masterful way, Freud sketches a portrait of Emmeline;79 he practically accuses her of being a self-centred old lady who cannot accept ageing and, in her decision to go back to Hamburg, he accuses her of jeopardizing not only his relationship with Martha, who is ready to fight to preserve it, but also that of Minna and nberg. Scho There are not many letters in what has been preserved of the correspondence dating from January 1883 until Marthas departure for Wandsbek on 15 June 1883. But one has the strong impression that Freud was fighting a battle that he was losing, as far as Martha and her family were concerned. His insistence on attacking Emmeline and even Eli this infantile person [dieser kindischer Mensch] (Freud to Martha, 18 March 1883; Fichtner et al., 2011, p. 416) rendered the situation ever more difficult for Martha who was desperately torn between Freud and her family, and it served only to reinforce her defence of her family. Even Minna pointed this out to Freud later on in a letter dated 21 June 1883 (Fichtner et al., 2011, pp. 4478), in which she tries to make him realize that, in severing his relationship with Emmeline, he is making Marthas emotional life more and more difficult. She was now alone in Wandsbek and had to look after the health of her mother while she did not feel well herself. The summer break that followed served to precipitate the situation yet again, albeit preceded by tender letters reminding each other of the anniversary of their first meeting, their secret engagement and so on. On 17 June 1883 (Fichtner et al., 2011, p. 437), Martha writes to Freud in her usual state of rapture that she is so happy to have been Freuds lover for a year and that she could not possibly kiss anybody else now. Notwithstanding the anniversary, Freud and Marthas relationship now faced a formidable array of obstacles and challenges. They were once
79 The portrait of Emmeline is comparable, stylistically speaking and for the psychological subtleties with which Freud describes her character, to that of the mother of Gisela he sent more or less ten years earlier to his friend Silberstein (see p. 893).
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more physically and geographically separated. Their only viable means of communication and connection, for the foreseeable future, lay in the writing of letters, unsupported by the meetings in person that had until then provided the means to resolve misunderstandings and provided a safety valve for their frustrations. Freuds poverty was so chronic, his professional duties so burdensome, and the distance between Vienna and Hamburg so great, that he could not travel to Wandsbek to see Martha. Their future remained uncertain and unresolved. In addition, Martha had to look after her mother, which made her exhausted and unable to write as often as before or reply to Freuds letters as quickly as he would like. Freud was confronted with what Martha, with her usual poetical sensitivity, defined as the endless desert [die endlose sste] the vast and seemingly unconquerable distance that separated Wu them (11 May 1883; Fichtner et al., 2011, p. 431). And, although its timespan was yet not completely clear, their separation would continue for many months which would turn into years. Yet more challenges and threats to their relationship arose. Freuds anxiety, his overwhelming love for Martha and his need to control and possess her, allied with Marthas difficulties in finding a way of coping with all this during those months, as well as her continuing health problems, meant that she began to sound much weaker and more compliant towards Freud. Now, even more than before, Freud felt like a caged lion. Because of the cage that he felt Emmeline, the enemy of our love (Jones, 1956, p. 136), had put him in, Freud started to flood Martha again with letter after letter full of verbal reproaches, mainly concerning what he believed to be Marthas unwillingness to be totally open with him as promised, to write to him and tell him all that was happening day by day in Wandsbek and, above all, about her inner life, from which Freud felt in danger of being excluded (Freud to Martha, letters dated 21, 23 and 27 June 1883; Fichtner et al., 2011, pp. 4537, 4667). In a letter dated 30 June 1883 (Fichtner, 2011, pp. 4758)80 Freud confesses: But until now I wanted to make something else out of you [Aber ich wollte bisher was anderes aus Dir machen]. Instead, he had to face the complexity of Marthas relationship with her family. Freuds old insecurity concerning Marthas real feelings returned but it ja was Freud who was behaving like an immature child81 Like a case of de vu that kept returning, the crisis followed a similar pattern to the previous one during Marthas first summer in Wandsbek in 1882. But this time, not being able to cope with Freuds fury and distress, Martha at one point became ill and fell into tearful desperation. Not knowing any more what to
80 Although Eli did not go to Wandsbek, he did not follow his mothers wish because a few months later her married Freuds eldest sister Anna. 81 See, for instance, what Freud wrote to Martha on 26 June 1883: he wants to be reassured da Dir niemand n aher in keiner Sache n aher steht als ich [that nobody is closer to you in any matter closer than me] (Fichtner et al., 2011, p. 465).
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say or do, but accepting that Freud might regard her behaviour wretched, miserable weakness [elende Schw ache], on 28 June, 1883 she wrote that she just wished she could be in Vienna, take the horse tramway to the hospital, visit him in his little room, abandon herself in his arms and have a good cry [ausweinen] (Fichtner et al., 2011, p. 470). In a letter dated 29 June 1883, Freud penned an angry series of accusations against the weakness in Marthas behaviour with her mother and Eli (Fichtner et al., 2011, pp. 4734). And the very next day he even threatens never to write to her again (Fichtner et al., 2011, p. 477). And then there were the post-climax-like moments of reconciliation with reciprocal excuses and expressions of remorse from Freud (2 July 1883; Fichtner et al., 2011, p. 488) in which he openly declares how shameful he feels for all the duresses he has inflicted to her, and repeats that he feels jealous and just wants to possess you and to totally possess you [Dich zu besitzen und Dich ganz zu besitzen]. Martha asks Freud to really have a lot of patience with me [recht viel Geduld mit mir zu haben] (30 June 1883; Fichtner et al., 2011, p. 481). In a very psychologically subtle letter to Freud, dated 2 July 1883, Martha explains to her fianc e that if she has hurt him: It was unconscious and unintentional [so geschieht es unbewut und ungewollt]. Note the first appearance of the term unbewut [unconscious] in the correspondence (Fichtner et al., 2011, p. 485).82 In a letter to Martha dated 4 July 1883, in one of his daydream-like anticipations of their future life together, when Martha is his wife and he can make up for everything, Freud writes that he will caress so fervently your delicate beautiful body, which is then mine, and always always remind myself how I have nen Leib, der hurt you and how you belong to the angels [den zarten scho dann mein eigen ist, so innig liebkosen und mich immer immer daran erinnern, wie wehe ich Dir getan habe und wie Du engelgut bist] (Fichtner et al., 2011, p. 496). Incidentally, this was the second and yet final time in the first volume of the Brautbriefe that Freud alluded to Marthas body as a sexual object, aside from her lips, kisses, embraces, and so on.83 The letter with which the Editors end the first volume of the Brautbriefe is one from Freud to Martha dated 12 July 1883 (Fichtner et al., 2011, p. 521). It is one of the most beautiful and telling of Freuds letters, so poetically inspired and crafted, and free of the verbosity that is to be found in many of his other letters. At one moment, as if in free association, daydream or a deep philosophical mood, he writes: I do not know how today I started to think like that. Freud tells Martha that everybody should choose one of the Great and Powerful as a kind of domestic god and patron protector. He refers to Milton, whose Paradise Lost, along with the English history of that period
82 Martha even chose a very pretty illustrated writing paper for one of her letters, dated 3 July 1883 (Fichtner et al., 2011, pp. 48992), which was as usual full of poetic quotations, including one from a poem by Auerbach on two lovers being as one, which she had already used. The letter was embellished with illustrations, in the form of medallions of scenes featuring children and one medallion depicting a large love-heart. The Editors of the Brautbriefe have reproduced the letter in facsimile form (p. 490). 83
The first instance occurred in the letter dated 25 November 1882 that I quoted earlier. Copyright 2013 Institute of Psychoanalysis
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(including Cromwell, of course), for whom he had already expressed his admiration84; he spoke of the magic power Milton has of removing one from such an unsatisfactory and unchanging present so that in the end the earth lies there like a small dot in the Universe and the broad sky opens up. But he ends up choosing Lessing as the one who can lead uns (us) in this world. As if in a daydream, he suggests to Martha that they should erect a statue of Lessing in their living room (a reminder of Freuds visit to Hamburg where he saw Lessings statue which he had described in his earlier letter to Martha (see p. 900), wherever that will be, and place his books in a prominent position. And he reminds Martha that she had even sent him a beautiful postcard of that statue, which he intends to frame and display in his little room at the hospital. I think that the numerous references to Lessing and Nathan der Weise that we find both in Freuds and Marthas letters, and in this letter in particular, can help me to introduce some final observations regarding the complex issues of Freuds Judaism vis- a-vis that of Martha. Lessings work Nathan der Weise (Nathan the Wise, 1769), a dramatic play focused on the character of Nathan, a Jew who does not claim or fight for the primacy of Judaism over Christianity or Islam, but is in favour of a tolerant co-existence of the three religions (Mittner, 1964, pp. 23746; Arendt, 1991, pp. 39). Nathan is the epitome of the enlightened Jewish tradition of M. Mendelssohn, the great German-Jewish thinker of the Enlightenment, and a friend of Lessing; Lessing moulded the character of Nathan on Mendelssohn (Momigliano, 1987, pp. 14659; Sorkin, 1996; Feiner, 2004). Lessing had a profound influence on Freuds father Jacob, who taught Freud about Lessings work. Freud himself identified so closely with the tolerant Nathan and detached himself much more than his father did from Judaism as a religion. A few days earlier, in one of his Jeremiaden [Jeremiah phases], Freud had become very worried about the health of Martha, whose constitution had been weakened by enduring Freuds anxieties and intolerance during those months. Freud now felt that her health and what she ate, or could not eat, was his concern. Is it not significant that in the name of his tolerant atheistic rationalism, when discussing Marthas health problems in a letter dated 11 July 1883 (Fichtner et al., 2011, p. 517), Freud becomes quite intolerant as he tries to convince his Marthchen [Marty] to free herself from what he calls a mad barbaric constriction [von einem tollen barbarischen Zwang]? Indeed, like the really godless Jew that he was, Freud started attacking one of the most sensitive and painful loyalties of Martha her loyalty to her fathers and her mothers background her religious orthodoxy that expressed itself in her kosher food. According to Freuds enlightened and tolerant (but at the same time intolerant) reason and passion, this kosher
84 Freud to Martha, 16 August 1882 (Fichtner et al., 2011, p. 291). Freud defines Miltons Paradise Lost as the sublime Denkmal [monument] of that period in English history, meaning the period of the Puritans and of Cromwell whom Freud admired so much. Reading Milton had consoled and supported him, when he thought that he was a stranger to his beloved M adchen [girl].
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food was damaging her health and was another sign of her weak, passive dependency on her family. Yet it was also the sign of a tradition in which one can clearly see the cultural and religious, if not social, differences85 between, on the one hand, Freuds family background and, on the other hand, Marthas Judaism. This was an issue which of course would play a more or less hidden but very important role in many of their future troubles.86 Of course, we must wait for the complete edition of the Brautbriefe. But the first volume can help us to better understand the complex problem of Freuds Jewish identity, its contradictions and later developments, and how it affected his relationship with Martha. Indeed, Freuds and Marthas references to Jewish culture and tradition should be studied in detail87 although one has to handle this issue with care hrung (Fichtner and balance, as Grubrich-Simitis points out in her Einfu et al., 2011, pp. 3943). What is at times striking, particularly in Freuds case, nevertheless, is his sense of belonging to his people something we know he never denied or forgot at any point in his life. Volume one of the Brautbriefe contains several psychological portraits of Freuds teachers and friends J. Breuer and T. Meynert. But speaking of Nothnagel, the famous professor of general medicine at Vienna General Hospital with whom Freud worked for several months in 1882, Freud says: No, the man does not belong to our race [Nein, der Mann ist keiner unserer Rasse] (Freud to Martha, 5 October 1882; Fichtner et al., 2011, p. 367). Note how emotionally and culturally charged unserer [our] sounds when Freud says Nothnagel is not a Jew. Just think of another example of an early famous letter from Freud to Martha dated 23 July 1882, written from Hamburg, which starts with a quotation from Nathan der Weise (Fichtner et al., 2011, pp. 21519; Freud E, 1960, pp. 1924, 1961, pp. 3540). In this letter, Freud reminisces about an old Jewish man in Hamburg who supplied him with the writing paper monogrammed with the initials S and M that he had wanted, and who reminded him of some
There is a well-known popular Yiddish expression, yekke, that the Ostjuden used to describe in a rather derisive, disparaging way albeit betraying at the same time a sense of cultural inferiority some of the characteristics of the often more sophisticated, integrated, Westernized, mainly Sephardic Jews from northern Germany. I do not want to suggest that this was Freuds attitude towards the Bernays he had, after all, composed a very respectful portrait of Marthas grandfather in his latter to Martha dated 23 July 1882 (Fichtner et al., 2011, pp. 21519). Certainly, the Galician Ashkenazis and other Ostjuden influenced by the Haskalah movement inspired by M. Mendelssohns enlightened Judaic way of thinking, in spite of the fact that Mendelssohn lived and thought in Germany, were more liberal and less orthodox in their Judaism than certain Sephardic north German Jews (see Bartal, 2005, pp. 58, 57101; Feiner, 2002; Le Rider and Raschel, 2010; Solomon, 2010, in Le Rider and Raschel, pp. 10331), of whom Marthas family was such a prominent representative. Although in the letter quoted above Freud portrays Marthas grandfather as a sort of almost-Reform Jew, there is a small but interesting detail that should perhaps be remembered: the Reform rabbi I. N. Mannheimer, who married Jacob and Amalia Freuds parents participated in a polemic in 1841 against Isaac Bernays, Marthas famous grandfather (Aron, 1956, p. 286)! In the case of Marthas Orthodox observance of some of the Jewish religious rules, such as eating kosher food, maybe one has to consider also the influence of her mother.
85 86 As all his biographers have pointed out, it was only with great reluctance that Freud later on agreed to a religious marriage. 87 I cannot quote here all the references both Freud and Martha make to the Bible, to Jewish culture, etc, in just the first volume of the Brautbriefe.
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traits of Nathan the Wise. Freud goes on to praise the teacher of that old man I. Bernays, Marthas grandfather and his enlightened teaching of Judaism (Bollack, 1998, pp. 4586), despite Bernayss acceptance of the Jewish kosher rules something Freud seems to have forgotten when reproaching Martha!88 And he nearly compares I. Bernays to Nathan the Wise! And in this letter is we find several references to uns and wir [us/ we] in relation to the Jews. We also find Freuds famous reference to the destiny of the Jews after the destruction of the temple in Jerusalem by the Roman emperor Titus (Steiner, 2000). The letter ends with his famous statement that, as far as he and Martha are concerned, he believes that even if the form wherein the old Jews were happy no longer to offers us any shelter, something of the core, of the essence, of this meaningful and life-affirming Judaism will not be absent from our home [wenn die Form, in der die alten Juden sich hlten, auch fu r uns kein Obdach mehr bietet, etwas vom Kern, das wohl fu Wesen des sinnvollen und lebensfrohen Judentums, wird unser Haus nicht verlassen] (Fichtner et al., 2011, pp. 219; Freud, 1961, pp. 3940). This kind of Judaism is of course something that Martha, more than Freud, would struggle to accept, and we do not know really how painful it was for her to renounce the shelter provided by the rules and rituals of her Jewish Orthodoxy.89 But just think of this last example in a letter to Martha dated 24 August 1882, Freud says that George Eliot, although a Nichtjude [non-Jew], included in Daniel Deronda many fine and bold den [us Jews] (Fichtner et al., 2011, p. 316), observations about uns Ju something that we usually are able to mention only in the closest of our circles because anyone else would see them as much too impudent Well, we must wait for the publication of the other volumes to reach a full picture of this so intense, conflicted and at the same time moving love history. But, before concluding, I think something more should be said about the fascinating emergence in these letters of a vocabulary that is still embedded in the everyday, often emotional and visceral language of Freud and Martha, but which later on we encounter again in the so-called technical terms of Freuds psychoanalysis. The terms do not of course have the same meanings because they inevitably acquire different ones when used in relation to Freuds discovery of the Unconscious. At the same time, however, one cannot deny that in psychoanalysis the origins of certain conceptual and emotional terms can be traced back to the Brautbriefe. Certainly, the conceptual terms of psychoanalysis come in part from the language of the natural sciences, which can lead to a scientism so fashionable in the
88 When criticizing Martha for her kosher rituals in the letter I have just mentioned, Freud seems to nearly contradict himself in forgetting how understanding he felt just the previous year about I. Bernayss wish to respect the kosher tradition based on the interpretation of the Holy Scriptures and what God told Adam and Eve in the Garden of Eden (Fichtner et al., 2011, pp. 2178; Freud, 1961, pp. 389.) 89 According to Behling (2005, pp. 1567), Martha never lit the candles again on Friday night for the Sabbath for 50 years after marrying Freud; she lit them again, for the first time in 50 years, on the Friday following Freuds death. Elliot Phillips one of Marthas cousins claimed in a letter to Jones dated 28 October 1956: I remember very well her telling me how not being allowed to light the Sabbath lights on the first Friday after her marriage was one of the most upsetting experiences of her life.
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so-called empirical scientific psychoanalysis of today, which aims to measure and calculate even the intensity of the emotions and characteristics of the Unconscious; but these terms also often come from the language of literature and romantic philosophy. Think of the dreams that Freud and Martha reported to each other Think of Freud and Marthas concern with accurately expressing their dreams, and their use of the terms Phantasie [phantasy] or Traum Phantasie [dream phantasy]. Think about the visceral creative stream of the language of everyday life and emotion, from which comes Marthas use of the term unbewut [unconsciously] (Fichtner et al., 2011 p. 465), verdraengt [repressed] (2011, p. 531) and, above all, Freuds use of besitzen [to possess, to own, if not also to occupy, as this verb also means in German]. And just remember Freuds use of the term verwerfen [to repudiate] (2011, p. 175), erregt [be excited] (2011, p. 396), and nachtr aglich [later, or deferred action, as translated rather dubiously by J. Strachey] (2011, pp. 265, 446, 517), an adjective on which contemporary psychoanalysis has poured rivers of ink trying to make sense of it. Freud even speaks of unheimlich [uncanny] (Fichtner et al., 2011, p. 367) and analysieren [to analyse] (2011, p. 451)! I am sure that a closer reading will reveal much more about the future glossary of psychoanalysis, so deeply rooted culturally and historically in the personal life of both Freud and Martha in those years.
The Brautbriefe and psychoanalysis

ich k ame per Luftballon [ I came by hot-air balloon] (Martha to Freud, 26 August 1882; Fichtner et al., 2011, p. 327) To rescue the past from the enormous condescension of the present90
One has to stress that, even when we will have at our disposal the entire FreudMartha correspondence, we will still have only a less partial understanding of what went on between them during those years and the nature of their feelings. Even the first volume of the Brautbriefe bears witness to something one has to imply from all sorts of other, more or less private, archival historical documents. There is always an inevitable discrepancy a gap, something left hidden and unknown for all sorts of reasons which are impossible to discuss here (Steiner, 1993, 1994) between what was originally felt and thought and what was written; therefore, between what has become a public, documented expression and the thoughts and feelings that the correspondents did not commit to paper and that therefore do not form part of the public record. Not to mention some of their actions. Even in the case of the most sincere correspondence, as the Brautbriefe seem to be, by definition not all of the correspondents thoughts and
90 A paraphrase of the famous statement about the working class by E. P. Thomson (1963). I would like to thank Prof. J. Mitchell for drawing my attention to the statement.
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actions could be communicated even Freud and Martha were themselves aware of that, as we have seen. Therefore, their correspondence can only be partially studied, more or less cautiously interpreted or, for those who like this kind of biographical or historical methodology, psychoanalysed When reading the Brautbriefe, besides the specific personality of the correspondents and their personal problems, as well as the missing documents (it should be said that even in the case of the Brautbriefe not all the letters have survived), or documents that have been deliberately hidden or destroyed, one should consider the cultural and historical contexts, rhetorical conventions and censorship. One must also consider the personality and cultural horizons of the interpreter of these letters (Steiner, 1994). We must also not forget that, in many cases, and perhaps even in the Brautbriefe, written words can sometimes be used to avoid saying what should be said (Gay, 1984, pp. 10910). The inevitable limits of any attempt to come to a final and definitive truth about what went on between Freud and Martha, and the possible implications for Freuds work as a psychoanalyst, should, I think, be kept in the background even as far as the considerations and questions which will lead to the conclusion of my work are concerned. Everything that belongs to unknown aspects of Freuds personality and his affective and intellectual life, even of the so-called personal dark side of his character his tyrannical need to totally control Martha, for instance, and his anxious fear of any rival, of which the first volume of the Brautbriefe bears more than one example is of course of primary importance and can help us to better understand psychoanalysis as both a discipline and a movement. However, one must accept that, as in the case of any great creative individual, there can never be a mechanical cause and effect link between a persons life and his or her creative work. La psychoanalyse, cest moi, one could say for Freud, paraphrasing Flauberts famous statement Madame Bovary, cest moi. But, as in the case of Flaubert, whose characters embody aspects of his life and phantasies which are perhaps more those of his imaginative creativity than, strictly speaking, his biographical life (Kris, 1952, p. 288; Starobinski, 1970, pp. 7883), so the same can be said, mutatis mutandis, for Freud and his creative work. Having said all that, one could ask a series of questions. It has been possible to find a cultural line of continuity between the Brautbriefe and Freuds later work as an analyst, but can one try to go further than that? Or, in spite of their enormous autobiographical and biographical value, are these letters so dated and so entrenched in a sort of archaeological past of psychoanalysis that they can have meaning for scholars interested in that past, but very little importance in reality for Freuds psychoanalysis, not to mention for contemporary psychoanalysis? I think it is legitimate to try to find further possible traces in the letters of Freuds later work as a psychoanalyst, besides all that I have already noted, about all those tumultuous feelings, those dreams and projects, lamour passion, as Stendhal (1842)
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called passionate feelings mixed with excitement and frustration and pain.91 These feelings were transformed into a more placated and peaceful love and affection for Martha later on in the Brautbriefe, at least from time to time until they get married (Jones, 1956, pp. 145, 15368)92. And it is also legitimate to ask what role Martha played in the traces left by the Brautbriefe in Freuds work as a psychoanalyst. Jones (1956, p. 111, p. 133)93 and Gay (1989a, p. 38)94 among others95 have rightly pointed out the role that Marthas and Freuds sexual frustrations and anxieties played in Freuds early psychoanalytic papers and first rudimentary psychoanalytic explanations, when he was trying to make sense of neurasthenia, anxiety and actual neuroses, psychoneuroses and of course hysteria, obsessions and phobias; Freud tried to locate the symptoms of these conditions in repressed or inhibited sexuality and abstinence, particularly before but also during marriage (1985[18871904]). Indeed, consider Freuds 1895 paper, On the right to separate from neurasthenia a definite symptom-complex as anxiety neurosis (SE 3, pp. 1001) [Uber die Berechtigung von der Neurasthenie eine bestimmten SymptomeComplex als Angstneurose abzutrennen (GW 1, pp. 3223)]; or what Freud wrote later on the role of sexuality in neurosis in Die Sexualit at in der Aetiologie der Neurosen (1898, GW 1, pp. 491516, passim; SE 3, pp. 26185, passim). In those papers, over and over again, using his first very complicated model (which of course did not exclude hereditary factors), Freud came
91 I do not know whether Freud actually read Stendhals essay De lamour (1822), one of the most influential books of the 19th century on this subject (see Bergmann, 1987, pp. 12936). Freud quotes the book and its author only indirectly, through Heines poem Der Asra, based on a passage of Stendhals es u ber Krieg und Tod, GW 10, p. 338; Reflections on War and Death, book (Freud S, 1915, Zeitgema SE 14, p. 290).
In the Geheim-Chronik, the first long note, dated 26 January 1883, is from Martha who states with bold finality that: Die Romantik liegt hinter uns [Romanticism is behind us] (Fichtner et al., 2011, p. 531). According to Jones (1956, p. 153) on 29 October 1883 Freud wrote to Martha that his love was passing from a lyric phase into an epic one. Freud and Martha will nevertheless go on to enjoy further moments of romantic or lyric love during their long courtship. And we are of course very, very far away from what M. Schur (1955) whose intimate knowledge of Freuds family life during the last years of his life cannot be disputed wrote to Jones on 30 September 1955, commenting on the first volume of his biography of Freud, more than 70 years after the documents I have just quoted: As to Martha here, I have my doubts whether at the time I knew them she still was the one and only. As far as I can see, he spent less and less time with her. There was an air of understanding forgiveness for her increasingly pedantic attitudes. After having stressed Freuds kindness towards Martha, Schur claimed: Freud was always controlled and polite but there was so little left of the great love that I was quite surprised by volume one. In his last years it was only Anna (my italics). But we have to bear in mind that this first volume of the Brautbriefe refers really to a unique moment in the life of Freud and Martha. No passion as such could last for a long time.
93 Jones, referring to Freuds worries about the black rings around Marthas eyes, that are said to be due to his passionate kisses and embraces, claims that it was the first hint of what Freud was later to describe as the anxiety neurosis of engaged couples. 94 Gay, referring more generally to Freuds and Marthas sexual abstinence, which was dictated to a great extent by their class and culture of those times, states that those interminable years of waiting left their imprint on the formation of Freuds theories about the sexual aetiology of most mental ailments, and that, when in the 1890s Freud theorized about the erotic travails attendant upon modern life, he was writing in part about himself and, one could add, also about Martha. 95 See, for example, the chapter (although rather questionable at times) entitled Martha the loss of an illusion in Bregers book (2000, pp. 8696), and also Behling (2005, passim).
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back to the external sociological causes of restrictions imposed by what he called Kultur [civilization], expressed in a restrictive education, compulsive abstinence, fear or condemnation of masturbation, which he saw as causing all sorts of symptoms in both men and women during their engagement but also their marriage. Consider his and Marthas autobiographical experience of being separated and having to wait so long to be together and to get married, although waiting had been quite a common experience in their families too: Emmeline had to wait nine years to marry B. Bernays (Behling, 2005, p. 19). And think too of all that this could imply for many aspects of Freuds later views, not only on sexuality but on anxiety too, and so on.96 If one wants to follow this line of thought, arguing that one can discern the partial impact and re-elaboration of autobiographical experiences and sufferings in those papers of Freud mentioned above, one could also see a development that leads, as Strachey rightly observed (SE 3, p. 262), to Freuds (1908) famous paper, Die Kulturelle Sexual Moral und die Moderne Nervosit at (GW 7, pp. 14853, 1667) [Civilized sexual ethics and modern nervous illness (SE 9, pp. 18692, 204)]. The impact of these early years can also be seen in Freuds (1912) paper, On the universal tendency to debasement in the sphere of love (SE 11, pp. 18490) [Uber die allgemeinste Erniedrigung des Liebeslebens (GW 8, pp. 8390)] and his sociological observations on virginity, not only among primitive but also so-called civilized people and couples, in Das Tabu der Virginit at (1918, GW 12, pp. 26180) [The taboo of virginity (1918, SE 11, pp. 193208)]. In the end, one could even recall without forgetting Hemmung Symptom und Angst (1926, GW 19, p. 157) [Inhibitions, Symptoms and Anxiety (1926, SE 20, p. 141)] what Freud wrote on the same subject in 1930 in Das Unbehagen in der Kultur (GW 14, pp. 46075) [Civilization and its Discontents (SE 21, pp. 10116)]. The conflicting experiences and frustrations of the long betrothal with Martha (Gay, 1989a, pp. 367) and the effects that this had on both of them seems therefore to be something that Freud could never completely forget in his late work. It accompanied him like a long shadow until his late years. Although the memories and experiences were of course mellowed by, and blended and enriched with, all sorts of other clinical, theoretical, philosophical and social views and discoveries. But perhaps one could go even further. Of the famous discussion on the necessary condition for loving in Freuds paper, A special type of choice of object made by man (SE 11, pp. 1667) [Uber einen besonderen Typus der Objektwahl beim Manne (1910, GW 8, pp. 678)] the first of three papers collectively called Contributions to the Psychology of Love could one not
96 I drew the attention of the reader to the way Freud and Martha coped, or did not cope, with die Trennung [the separation]. Well, one could be tempted to ask, if it does not sound too speculative and deterministic, how much of that experience let us forget about Freuds and Marthas early experiences was then metabolized and transformed into Freuds entire meditation on the nature of Angst [anxiety]? The difference between anxiety as a signal of the danger, for instance, of being abandoned, of losing the object and the actual pain of losing it is described in the essay Inhibitions, Symptoms and Anxiety (1926, SE 20).
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say that Freud had in mind his own terrible, jealous triangle between Martha, Max, and himself, and then also Fritz? I have in mind, in particular, Freuds description of the effect that an engaged woman can have on a man who loves her; she can become ignored or even rejected, but through the presence of a rival she becomes Gegenstand der Verliebtheit (Freud S, 1910, GW 8, p. 68) (the object of passionate feelings, as Strachey idiosyncratically translates the word Verliebtheit97 [Freud S, 1910, SE 11, p. 166]). And in the Contributions to the Psychology of Love one could perhaps find another echo of the Brautbriefe. In his paper Uber die Allgemeinste Erniedrigung des Liebeslebens (1912, GW 8, p. 81) Freud tries to define the mature form of love, in which sensuality and affection are united, concluding that: The greatest intensity of sensual passion will bring with it the chsten Grade von sinnlihighest psychical valuation of the object [Die ho chste psychische Wersch cher Verliebtheit werden die ho atzung mit sich bringen]; he adds that this is part of the normal overvaluation of the sexual object on the part of a man (and not of the woman therefore!), which could remind us of his affective but also sensual overvaluing of Martha.98 And is it not curious that, to describe all those feelings, Freud quotes the very same passage from the Bible he used, nota bene, 30 years earlier in one of his dreamlike, passionate letters to Martha, prizing her as a jewel, expressing his unique, total love for her? Nevertheless, he makes an interesting slip of the pen in his letter to Martha.99 But of course, in all the attempts to trace these lines of continuity that I have hinted at until now, one has also to be aware of the significant and at times enormous gap between Freud as a young man his passionate, conflicted, abstinent love relationship with Martha and their reciprocal problems and Freud as a married man, fathering in the end five children and having to face the inevitable changes which time and the wear and tear of everyday life brought to his relationship with Martha (Gay, 1989a, pp. 1614). But, above all, one has to put all those old memories and experiences in the context of Freuds work as a psychoanalyst and his complex
97 98
The word Verliebtheit means being in love.
Freud had already mentioned and discussed overvaluation of the sexual love object in Drei Abhandlunber Sexual Theorie (1905, GW 5, pp. 4950; Three Essays on Sexuality, SE 7, pp. 1501). gen u
99 The passage quoted by Freud in his letter to Martha dated 14 August 1882 (Fichtner et al., 2011, p. 283) is as follows: Das Weib soll Vater and Mutter verlassen und dem Manne folgen, der es erw ahlt [The woman must leave her father and mother and follow the man who has chosen her]. According to the Editors (Fichtner et al., 2011, p. 284, note 3), Freud seems to echo more the common version circulating in German culture. They quote Ein Sommer in London, the novel by Theodor Fontane (1854), who also refers to the woman who leaves her father and mother to follow the man who has chosen her. The Editors then quote the version from the Bible of Philippson (1 Moses 2, 24), a copy of which Freud possessed: Where is the man who has to leave his father and mother and cleave unto his woman so that they become one flesh? The Editors seem not to have noticed the difference between woman and man. Freud in his 1912 paper seemed to remember the quotation more correctly, although he is usually very approximate in his quotations: Der Man wird Vater und Mutter verlassen nach der biblischen Vorschrift, und seinem Weibe nachgehen (GW 8, p. 81) [A man shall leave his father and his mother according to the biblical command and shall cleave unto his wife] (SE 11, p. 181). Obviously at that time Freud wanted Martha to leave her family. But what about him? Could he not bear to leave his own father and mother?
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meditations on the issue of love, including his different ways of looking at love; indeed, in 1926, in answer to a questionnaire in a French periodical on the essence of love beyond sexuality (Reik, 1942, p. 97), Freud claimed that he did not know what to answer because he had not yet found the courage to make a broad statement on the essence of love and he thought our knowledge is not sufficient. And yet, perhaps because he could not find a definitive answer, Freud continued to ponder some specific problems related to love until the end of his life, as I will try to show (Bergmann, 1987; Steiner, 2001b).100 I have to assume that the reader is familiar with Freuds views on love; it would be impossible to discuss them in detail here because they coincide with the changing of Freuds clinical, theoretical and socio-cultural views of psychoanalysis as he understood it. In spite of the fundamental importance of sexuality in Freuds clinical and theoretical views, it was not the only factor in his continually evolving meditations on the nature of love: the change and evolution in his work was driven by all sorts of new evidence coming not only from his own life, his wife, his children and his grandchildren, but also from his patients, his relationships with colleagues and friends, the psychoanalytic movement and the study of broader social phenomena, such as groups, the changing of the political, cultural and social context in which he was living and, finally, from the use of different cultural sources besides the poets and writers of his and Marthas youth. For example, in addition to the hidden wisdoms of the myths of Oedipus, Narcissus, etc., or the work of Nietzsche, the following figures had profound influence on his thinking: Schopenhauer (1958[1858], pp. 332566), Plato of the Symposium (1993 [38580 BC]). (See Bergman, 1987; Steiner, 2001b.) In attempting to deepen the search for a possible relationship between the first volume of the Brautbriefe and the later vicissitudes of Freud as a psychoanalyst, one could consider the letters in relation to Freuds later recurrent, complex, labyrinthine and at times contradictory attempts to study narcissism and what he calls, narcissistic love linked to ego libido and hrung des Narzismu, 1914, object love linked to object libido (Zur Einfu GW 10, pp. 1412, 15370; SE 14, pp. 76, 87102). Indeed, one might ask how much his own tyrannical wish to control Martha and what he wrote to her about the egoistic nature of love during the first months and years of his engagement played a part in what he wrote on narcissistic love in his famous essay of 1914 and even later on? At the same time, thinking about Freuds enormous, immediate attachment to Martha as soon he met her, his feeling of being totally lost without
100 Bergmann (1987, pp. 15680), in what can still be considered a pioneering book on love through the centuries, focused on Freud and his successors as the last recipients of such a long tradition, and comes to the conclusion that one could find three different theories concerning love and its nature in Freud. Although I agree with him, he seems to have forgotten, or not clearly insisted upon, the importance of some statements by the late Freud on the way love expresses itself in old age (Steiner, 2001b). Had I known the Brautbriefe at that time, I could have shown some interesting similarities between what Freud later wrote on the characteristics of mature love, and even love in old age, and what he wrote to Martha on the vanishing and superficial importance of pure, external, physical beauty compared with what Martha was stimulating in him because of her inner beauty, on which their love could grow and find a permanent basis.
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her, and how she began to represent the meaning of his life, and that without her he could not live, one could ask how much of that personal experience might have been present and metabolized, more or less unconsciously, in those passages in which Freud describes the lovers depletion of narcissistic love for himself when in love with his beloved (1914, GW 10, pp. 141, 1534; SE14, pp. 76, 88); these reflections incidentally seem to echo what Freud had already observed in the Schreber case (1911, GW 8, SE 12), which I will comment on in a moment. It is also in these pages that Freud comes to the famous conclusion that men love in a different way from women although the difference should not be considered as some sort of general rule or regelmassig (1914, GW 10, p. 154), which Strachey (in SE 14, p. 88) translates as universal.101 (Also discussed in On the universal tendency to debasement in the sphere of love, SE 12). Remember the young Freuds constant complaints that Martha could not and did not love him as he did her and, as I have already stressed, his emotional but also sensual overvaluation of her in the few passages in which he mentions her body in the Brautbriefe.102 I could continue in this sort of exercise because the paper On narcissism (Freud S, 1914, GW 10, pp. 1605; SE 14, pp. 937) also contains the famous passages on the ideal ego, the heir of ones own infantile narcissistic perfection, which then becomes part of the adult individual and can be quite demanding. We saw how much Freud got fused, if not confused, with Martha, asking her to be what we might say with hindsight was also his own ideal ego. I hope it is clear that what I have tried to point out concerning the possible links between the first volume of the Brautbriefe and the later vicissitudes of Freud as a psychoanalyst, and even of Martha as his lover and then wife, implies the existence of their unconscious or less conscious personal, internal phantasy life and its infantile roots. The Brautbriefe nevertheless, to my mind, constitute a very important moment in time when Freuds and Marthas infantile unconscious phantasies and early infantile problems did find a sort of manifest conscious adult way to express themselves, which cannot be ignored. Yet it is at this point that we must also consider and respect the at times enormous gap between the Freud of the Brautbriefe and his later work. Do you remember the tremendous, almost obsessive importance that the two attributed to kissing each other and the misery of the abstinent young
101 I am referring here to the famous passage, Die volle Objektliebe nach dem Ahnlenungstypus ist r dem Mann charakteristich in Zur Einfu hrung des Narzimus (Freud S, 1914, GW 10, eigentlich fu p. 154) [Complete object love of the attachment type is, properly speaking, characteristic of the male] (On narcissism, SE 11, p. 88). 102 All those possible hints and echoes could finally be compared with his famous phenomenology of narcissistic and altruistic love in the same 1914 paper On narcissism: Man liebt (1) Nach dem narzisistchen chte (d) die Typus (a) was man selbst ist (sich selbst) (b) was man selbst war (c) was man selbst sein mo Person die ein teil des eigene Selbst war (2) Nach dem Anlehnungstypus: (a) die n ahrende Frau (b) den tzenden Mann (GW 10, p. 156). [A person may love (1) according to the narcissistic type (a) what schu he himself (i.e., himself) is (b) what he himself was (c) what he himself would like to be (d) someone who was once part of himself; (2) according to the anaclitic type (attachment type) (a) the woman who feeds him (b) the man who protects him] (SE 14, p. 90).
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couple? They kissed each other passionately on the streets and in the squares of Vienna, in the woods of Wandsbek, and in Freuds little room at the hospital and even through their letters themselves, one is tempted to say. One could argue that these letters acted as a substitute for this physical expression of love. Now, just think of what Freud wrote, 20 years or so after these passionate but not entirely satisfactory exchanges. Although in 1882 he was a medical doctor in training, with a superb career as a researcher and dissector of animal tissue already behind him, it would have been to my mind extremely difficult to imagine at the time of rmliche [passionate] kisses with their passionate embraces and Freuds stu Martha that he would go on to write such an, albeit involuntary, de-romanticized parody of the kiss in his anatomical, clinical, objectively accurate description of the act of kissing. Freud even hints at the fact that if pursued too exclusively the kiss could be considered a form of perversion if it does not lead to the sexual act that it should prepare for (Freud S, 1905, Three Essays on Sexuality, SE 7, pp. 1478; Drei Abhandlungen zur Sexual Theorie, GW 5, pp. 489). It is difficult to imagine Freud explaining all this to Martha!103 What I have in mind is the paragraph in his 1905 work I have just mentioned, (Deviations in respect of the sexual aim, SE 7, p. 149; Abweichung in Bezug auf das Sexualziel, 1905, GW 5, pp. 489). I do not think it is an exaggeration to claim that here again echoes of his own autobiographical experience and frustration must have played their part in what he observes about the kiss, its importance in preparing for the sexual act and the high sexual esteem in which it is held among many nations (including the most lkern (die ho chsts zivilisierten darunter)]. But civilized ones) [bei vielen Vo the link that can perhaps be discerned between the Freud and even the Martha of the Brautbriefe and what Freud says in his 1905 paper is paradoxical: indeed this time there is a profound gap between the Freud of the Brautbriefe and Freud the scientist. And what about Freuds cutting, anatomical reminder, expressed in a language that deliberately follows that of his scientific sources the doctors and sexologists of the time that as far as the kiss is concerned, in spite of all this high sexual esteem, one should remember that the parts of the body involved, namely the lips are not part of the sexual apparatus, but constitute the entrance to the digestive tract [nicht dem Geschelechstapparat ren, sondern den Eingang zum Verdauungskanal bilden] (Freud S, angeho 1905, SE 7, p. 150, my italics; 1905, GW 5, p. 49, my italics). That is of course the case even when Freud stresses that kissing is normal if it is not rmliche [passionate] too exclusively protracted. So where did all Freuds stu intensity end up (remember Marthas heiligen Lippen [sacred lips])? In the entrance to the digestive tract!
103 I wonder nevertheless whether one can totally exclude the possibility that Freud, in one way or another, had in mind the excessive frustrated kissing with Martha when, a few years later in his 1914 essay On Narcissism (GW 10, p. 167; SE 14, p. 100), he wrote that the state of being in love hat die Kraft Verdr angungen aufzuheben und Perversionen wieder herzustellen [has the power to remove repressions and reinstate perversions].
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Consider this other example, which again bears witness to the gap between Freud and even Martha of the Brautbriefe, and Freud as husband, father and psychoanalyst with Martha as his wife. Whatever contradictions one can find in Freuds psychoanalytic views concerning primary and secondary narcissism in trying to describe the earliest stages of the psychological life of the baby, think of what he stated about adult love in 1905 in t]: There are Three Essays on Sexuality [Drei Abhandlungen zur Sexualita thus good reasons why a child sucking at his mothers breast has become the prototype of every relation of love. The finding of an object is in fact a refinding of it (SE 7, p. 22); Nicht ohne guten grund ist das Saugen des r jede Liebesbeziehung geworKindes an der Brust der Mutter vorbildlich fu den. Die Objekfindung ist eigentlich eine Wiederfindung (GW 5, p. 123). Freud was stressing here the fundamental importance of the mother and also of the parental couple in all this. It is very difficult to imagine that he could be aware of what he stated as a psychoanalyst, during those first months of his engagement with Martha and even later on. Incidentally, both had to wait quite a long time to find or re-find that original happiness of the baby at the breast. Although, even in their case, it was a relative happiness One could therefore say that it is Freud as a later psychoanalyst who, with hindsight or nachtr aglich [by deferred action], could have helped his younger self to really make better sense of the multifaceted and at times contradictory love experiences with Martha in those first months of their engagement and even later on. Indeed, one could ask what sort of infantile experience Freud was looking for and reliving, or even refinding, although with great frustrations and difficulties, in his passionate love for Martha and in Marthas love for him? And what about Martha herself? Was Martha a real or phantasized mother? Was Freud for Martha a real or phantasized father and maybe also a mother? And what about the importance of their infantile phantasies of their own families? Perhaps some of Freuds followers, such as Melanie Klein, and others too, could help answer those questions. But one would then end up analysing Freud and Martha using Freud and his followers a legitimate goal, but not one that I am aiming at here. There is one last theme, nevertheless, to which I would like to draw the readers attention, bearing in mind all that I have said about the need to avoid considering the Brautbriefe as just some sort of mechanical anticipation of Freuds psychoanalysis, or as a sort of film negative which is just waiting to be developed. I hope that what I am going to briefly point out in ending this paper could persuade even the most sceptical reader of the Brautbriefe that the letters do not represent simply the archaeological past of psychoanalysis, and that they do not belong only to the world of yesterday or to the world of many years before yesterday, to paraphrase the title of Die Welt von Gestern by Stefan Zweig (1943) (see also Magris, 1964; Hobsbawm, 2013). It is true: the past in those letters is, at times, so to speak, so past that we can only be tenderly touched in comparing it with our present. Just think of one of Marthas letters to Freud, in which she wrote of her love and her longing for him. Martha states that if she had been wealthy she would have taken den Luftballon (my italic) [the hot-air balloon] a very
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expensive and exclusive form of transport, but faster than most others in those days to Vienna from Wandsbek (26 August 1882; Fichtner et al., 2011, p. 327). But it would be too easy to just ironically compare that Luftballon with a private helicopter or private jet of today; to paraphrase the words of the great British historian E. P. Thompson (1963), we must rescue the past from the enormous condescension of the present. For, in that albeit phantasized and so dated Luftballon, Martha and by extension even Freud carried something which is not only irreversibly past and dated, it is, as I will briefly try to show, part of a universal experience in space and time; at the very least it belongs to what the great French historian Braudel called la longue dur ee [the enduring or long-lasting]104 in this case, of feelings and emotions through time and space and different cultures. Of course this something also belongs to Marthas and Freuds specific, historical, socio-cultural and autobiographical experience of being in love. Notwithstanding what I have recalled as the inevitable gap between Freud and Martha as lovers and what followed later on, and what I recalled from Freuds work of 1905 concerning the infantile roots of every adult experience of love, which were of course not envisaged or consciously experienced at the time of Freuds and Marthas engagement, the Brautbriefe as such are an extremely interesting and important reference point even as far as Freuds psychoanalytic attempt to study the specific condition of falling and being in love is concerned. This is one of the themes he constantly came back to until the end of his life. In my view, Freuds psychoanalytic description of that particular experience cannot be ignored and is still a binding point to start from, even today, whatever Freuds followers inside psychoanalysis or those inspired by his work or working independently outside psychoanalysis have studied, argued, elaborated or critically objected to. I have already referred to some scholars but to mention just a few others (if this list were to be exhaustive it would be enormous) see: Freud A (1937, pp. 734), Barthes (1977), Baumann (2003), Green (2000, pp. 4172), Green and Kohon (2005), Kernberg (1985), Klein M (1946, particularly pp. 815; 1955, particularly pp. 1445; 1957, pp. 17688),105 Kohut (1980, pp. 47685), (Kristeva 2000), Lacan (1966, 1998), Passerini (1999), Passerini et al. (2010), Bettetini (2012, pp. 3597).106 Let us, for instance, consider the so-called Schreber case (1911), as I suggested a few paragraphs above. When dealing with Schreber (Psycho-analytic notes on an autobiographical account of a case of paranoia. Dementia
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Steiner, 1994.
I am thinking in particular of Kleins observations on the love for the mothers breast, which is not only the nourishing breast but also a very complex, emotional, loving experience. Much of what I am going to say on Freuds views could of course be re-interpreted using Kleins (1946) paper on projective identification, which contains similar descriptions to those of Freud as far as the loss of the self into another object is concerned, and On Identification (Klein, 1955) in which she clearly re-reads Freuds views on the idealization of the loved object etc, using her views on projective identification (pp. 1445). But Klein also stressed the notion of altruistic surrender in A. Freuds (1937) work The Ego and the Mechanisms of Defence.
106 Of course I cannot deal here with what has been written on love by the writers, poets and musicians, or painted by painters or sculpted by sculptors, of the 20th century. And that is without mentioning the philosophers!
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paranoides [Freud S, SE 12, pp. 689]; Psychoanalytische Bemerkungen ber eine Autobiographishisch Beschriebene. Dementia Paranoides [1911, u GW 8, p. 307]), Freud managed to compare and contrast Schrebers delusion of the end of the world with the climax of the ecstasy of love, in which it is not the ego and its extreme pathological narcissistic needs, but the single love object that absorbs all the libidinal cathexes directed upon the external world. And, a few pages earlier, Freud contrasts Schrebers megalomania with the state of an individual whose megalomania is never so veheckt] (SE 12, mently suppressed (GW 8, p. 302) [so intensiv unterdru p. 65) than when he is in the grip of an overpowering love [eine m achtigergreifende Verliebtheit]. To support his views, Freud quotes a passage from the Ghazals love poems by one of the greatest Oriental poets of all time, namely the Persian mediaeval poet Muhammad ibn Muhammad107 (Schimmel, 1982, 1992a; Harmless, 2008):
For when the flames of love arise, Then self, the gloomy tyrant, dies. (SE 7, p. 65) Denn wo die Lieberwacht. Stirbt Das Ich, der finstere Despot. (GW 8, p. 302)
Just remember this quote and now let us go a little further. In the 1914 paper On Narcissism, describing the state of the impoverishment of the ego when in love due to the overvaluation of the object, Freud recalls again the phantasy of the end of the world of the paranoid President Schreber (GW 10, p. 141; SE 14, pp. 746). And just a few years later, in Introductory Lechtures on Psycho-Analysis (SE 16, lecture no. 26; Vorlesungen zur Einfu rung in die Psychoanalyse, 1917, GW 11, vorl. n. 26), Freud comes back to the same issues once more adding something new. It is impossible to go into all the details here of lecture 26, and compare it with what Freud had already said in his 1914 paper On narcissism. But in describing the condition of being in love he contrasts it again with narcissism, while stressing that when there is an altruistic transposition of egoism onto the sexual overberm valued object, the object becomes supremely powerful [u achtig] and the object has as it were absorbed the ego [es hat das Ich gleichsam aufgesogen] (GW 11, p. 433; SE 16, p. 418). Let us try to follow Freud even further What about what we can read in the famous Chapter 8, entitled Being in love and hypnosis [Verliebtheit und hypnose], in Massenpsychologie und Ich-Analyse (1921, GW 13, pp. 1228; SE 18, pp. 11116)? The chapter is extremely condensed and made more complicated and interesting by all that Freud had further elaborated in those fundamental years between 1914 and 1921 concerning his clinical and theoretical views on psychoanalysis.108 Consider, for example,
107 108
This is the name which appears in SE 12, p. 65.
See, for example, Trauer und Melancholie (Mourning and melancholia, 1917) and Jenseits des Lustprinzip (Beyond the Pleasure Principle, 1920). Int J Psychoanal (2013) 94 Copyright 2013 Institute of Psychoanalysis
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the role played by identifications and introjections in Freuds description now, of the various ways that one can identify with the love object via introjection; the way the love object can take the place of the ego or of the ideal ego, and the relationship, nota bene, between being in love and hypnosis (which would deserve greater attention), and between sensual and sublimated non-sensual love and affection. Here again, together with old themes already touched on in his 1914 paper On Narcissism, which he revisits and expands, what is so striking is his coming back to comment on the state of being in love (one has to say nevertheless mainly as far as the man is concerned) focusing particularly on the young mans sentimental passion, the loss of power and distortion of judgement of the lover when in the grip of the overvaluation and Idealisirung [idealization] (GW 13, p. 124; SE 18, p. 112), as Freud now calls it, of the beloved object. The beloved object, which can become a part of ones own ideal ego109 can in certain cases make the ego feel more and more modest and unassuming,110 until finally the loved object gets possession of the entire self-love of the ego of the lover [es gelangt schlielich in den Besitz der gesamten Selbstliebe des Ichs] (GW 13, p. 124; SE 18, p. 113) The object has so to speak consumed the ego [Das Objekt hat sozusagen das Ich ausgezehrt] (ibid.). Curiously enough, Freud also comes back even to that form of love that cannot be physically satisfied unhappy love111 and that can lead to an extreme overvaluation of the object, which can put into question any critical function of what he still calls here the ideal ego. He now calls this extreme overvaluation devotion of the ego to the love object [Hingabe des Ichs an das Objekt] (GW 13, p. 125; SE 18, p. 113). Of course, here we can see Freud in full theoretical flow, revisiting and re-examining old views, expanding on them, correcting them and hinting at new developments. But if one just considers the recurrent theme of the depletion, at times even the near disappearance, of what he calls the ego of the lover, is it a matter of pure speculation and projection by the interpreter of those texts to stress that perhaps the shadows of his own autobiographical experiences were still lingering around in these sophisticated new formulations? But now look at this: the presence of Freuds earlier experiences can even be felt in the short, apparently minor paper of Humour (SE 21, pp. 1645; 1927, GW 14, p. 387), which has behind it the new theoretical framework of Beyond the Pleasure Principle and, above all, of the 1921 work The Ego and the Id, a framework which is quite different from the one we found in the papers On narcissism and so on that I have just quoted. In Humour, to explain dynamically the interaction between the ego and what he now calls the superego, Freud comes back as a useful example to the situation of
109 Remember what Freud had already observed in his papers on Schreber (1911) and narcissism (1914) concerning the depletion of the ego of the lover and the phantasy of the end of the world when in love. 110 .. echoing again what Freud had already observed, quoting the famous mediaeval Persian poet in the Schreber case concerning the nearly total repression of the megalomania of the lover and contrasting it with Schrebers flourishing megalomania. 111 He refers here quite clearly again, as in his old papers, to unconsummated sensual love because sexual satisfaction always involves a reduction in sexual overvaluation.
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being in love, which he differentiates from ordinary erotic love cathexis because in the state of being in love the object one loves is much more cathected and the ego empties itself, as it were, in favour of the object [das Ich gleichsam nach dem Objekt entleert] (GW 14, p. 387; SE 21, p. 165). Incidentally, one could add, what a beautiful anticipation of certain aspects of projective identification! Now consider what Freud claims later in Civilization and its Discontents [Das Unbehagen in der Kultur] (1930, GW 14, p. 423; SE 21, p. 66), in which he reiterates, according to Strachey, what he had already suggested in the Schreber case (1911, GW 8, p. 307; SE 12, p. 69): Freud gives us another more articulated version of the phantasy and feelings of the end of the world and to the ecstasy of love: At the height of being in love, the boundary between an ego and object threatens to melt away. Against all the evidence of his senses, a man who is in love declares that I and you are one, he der Verliebtand is prepared to behave as if it were a fact [Auf der Ho heit droht die Grenze zwischen Ich und Objekt zu verschwimmen. Allen Zuegnissen der Sinne entgegen behauptet der Verliebte, da Ich und Du Eines sein und ist bereit sich also es so w are, zu benehmen].112 Although in a rather condensed form, Freud finally returns in An Outline of Psychoanalysis (SE 23, p. 151) [Abriss der Psychoanalyse (1940, GW 17, p. 73)] to what seems to be an issue he had to constantly readdress in one way or another when he discusses the vicissitudes of the libido: It is only when a person is completely in love that the main quota of libido is transferred onto the object and the object to some extent takes the place of the ego [Nur in im Zustand einer vollen Verliebtheit wird der Hauptbetrag bertragen, setz sich das Objekt gewissermassen der Libido auf das Objekt u und die Stelle des Ich]. But Freuds interesting and, to my mind, even moving need to return to the same issues does not have only a possible link to the content of those autobiographical experiences and emotions; one could perhaps even argue that he was also gradually trying to make sense of so many aspects of his love for Martha through his late discoveries. The fact is that when he really tried to start making sense, psychoanalytically speaking, of some aspects of what he called being in love, at times he made use whether or not he realized it of the same literary sources that Martha and he were using at the time that they fell in love and were at the height of being in love. Those literary sources enabled them at that time, as we have seen, to better understand what they felt for each other. I have already mentioned the passage from the Bible that Freud quoted in his 1912 paper (p. 75), but bear in mind too Goethes EastWestern Diwan, which was quite well known to Martha and Freud.113
112 But remember what Martha, and not only Freud, felt during those first months of engagement when she more than once quoted a poem by E. Auerbach in which the lovers are described as being as one (see p. 910). 113 Goethes EastWestern Diwan is quoted by Martha to Freud in a letter dated 26 October 1882 (Fichtner et al., 2011, pp. 3878). She quotes another passage used as an epigraph in her sister Minnas letter to her, but it is quite obvious that both she and Freud knew Goethes work. Indeed, she says that that passage was very much loved by both of them.
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When, in Lecture 26 of the Introductory Lectures on Psychoanalysis (1917) that I mentioned earlier, Freud wanted to find an illustrious support to underpin his views on the condition of being in love, which is so different from narcissism and in which the lover becomes so dependent on the beloved that he feels lost and empty without her,114 he refers to a passage in Goethes work EastWestern Diwan that describes how the lover feels lost if his lover abandons him. Interestingly, Goethe, quoted by Freud, rpere [incorporates himself] in the lover whom claims that the lover verko she might choose instead of him (S. Freud, GW 11, p. 434; SE 16). Just think of the early months of Freuds love for Martha of Fritz, of Max, etc., and of his absolute need to claim her all for himself, to the point that he wrote to her that he had chained himself to her (see p.89). Incidentally, again, what fascinating anticipations of some aspects of projective identification. Think also of these two other details. In first mentioning, in the Schreber case (1911), the end-of-the-world phantasy typical of people in love not to be confused with that of paranoiacs where the love object seems to absorb all the cathexes directed to the external world, depleting the ego of the lover, Freud quotes Wagners opera Tristan und Isolde (1911, GW 7, p. 307; SE 12, p. 69); in the Brautbriefe, Martha refers directly to the literary work, which was, as I tried to show, familiar to the young Freud even before he met Martha.115 But probably, at least for me, the most interesting detail that again illustrates the fundamental role played by Martha and her Luftballon of poets, imagination and love feelings, and of the Brautbriefe in general, in what followed even decades after, is the passage that Freud quoted not so much to embellish his text as to demonstrate once more the validity of his views from that famous Persian poet and author of some of the most inspiring, mystical and erotic poems of world literature, whom I have already mentioned, namely Muhammad ibn Muhammad (see Schimmel, 1982, 1992a, 1992b; Harmless, 2008, pp. 336; F. Lewis, foreword, in Rumi, 2009). This contravenes those attempts at finding testable evidence, empirically measured, even of the state of being in love, and its feelings, by certain representatives of contemporary psychoanalysis! After all, Freud was persuaded that poets had a better understanding of these matters than psychoanalysis. These verses must have had a rather ambiguous resonance in Freud, thinking of the contradictory vicissitudes of his ego and his self-esteem
114 Goethes work is deeply influenced by Oriental poetry and thinking. The passage quoted by Freud imagines Hatem, a lover, speaking about his beloved Zuleika: Does she expend her being on me, myself grows to myself of cost Turne she away, then instantly I to my very self am lost. (SE 16, p. 418)Wie sie r sich an mich verschwendet Bin ich mir ein wertes Ich; H atte sie sich weggewendet, Augenblicks verlo ich mich. (GW 11, p. 435)
These references to Tristan and Isolde would have greatly interested de Rougemont (1972[1939]), whose fascinating and very important work on love in Western civilization I mentioned earlier in this paper (p. 892) and who made of Tristan and Isolde the archetype of the notion of love which, in his view, influenced modern and contemporary Western culture. De Rougemont did not mention or comment on Freuds and Marthas quotation of, and interest in, Tristan and Isolde the letters to Silberstein and the correspondence with Martha were unpublished at that time, although the Schreber case had been published long since! Copyright 2013 Institute of Psychoanalysis Int J Psychoanal (2013) 94
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when he fell in love with Martha. Bear in mind his early confessions of being a tyrant or despot. It is the same word used by the Persian poet to define the ego!116 I have no doubt that all this could be traced back to Freuds own autobiographical infantile vicissitudes, for he had been the favourite and despotic child of a despotic mother. But what matters here is the subtle cultural network of old literary sources. I deliberately left out the fact that in quoting those verses Freud used a ckert, the great German Orientalist poet and scholar translation made by Ru of the 19th century (see the still fundamental essay by Schimmel, 1966). ckerts own poems were often translations of ancient mediaeval PersianRu Indian poems. ckert to use the words of Martha, It was therefore mein geliebtest Ru ckert in her own poems who, through his who even tried to imitate Ru translations of Muhammad Ibn Muhammad, again helped Freud to describe the theme that, as we have seen, became a sort of leitmotif in Freuds meditation on the state of being in love and the loss of what he called the ego of the lover into the other, or the feeling of being emptied ckerts poetry to express more eloout by the other. Martha often used Ru quently her feelings of love during the first years of her engagement with Freud. Freuds feelings were at the same time being enriched by his own ckerts poetry, which he undoubtedly would not have read reflections on Ru so much of, and recalled so much of, had it not been for Martha. And ckert (not only his name and what it evoked, but also certain related Ru memories and experiences) would be recalled when Freud felt it was necesckert. For sary. Even in later years, Freud attributed significance to Ru example, in the final lines of Beyond the Pleasure Principle (1920, SE 18, p. 64), he writes, quoting Ruckert: What we cannot reach flying we must reach limping/ The Book tell us it is no sin to limp [Was man nicht erfliegen kann,muss man erhinken/Die Schrift sagt, es ist keine Suende zu hinken]. Perhaps one of the most fascinating and interesting conclusions, without of course exaggerating its importance, is that through their more or less direct or indirect links with Oriental poetry of all ages, and through their important role in German Orientalism of the 19th century (Gutjahr, 2000; ckert and Goethe helped Freud the psySaid, 2003[1978], pp. 1678),117 Ru choanalyst who cannot be conceived of without Freud and Martha the lovers if not universalize then certainly make less Eurocentric and dated, in cultural terms, what he meant by the experience of being in love. Mutatis mutandis, on a larger and more significant scale it had already happened with Freuds use of the myth and legend of Oedipus in all its historical and geographical ramifications to support its universal meaning for psychoanalysis (Steiner, 1994). Incidentally, the great British anthropologist J. Goody (1998, pp. 96123; 2010, pp. 2132) has recently, in a series of fascinating papers, again drawn
116 See the quotation from the Persian poet Muhammad ibn Muhammad a few paragraphs previously, in which he also mentions the ego as a despot!! 117 ckert, but he was much more influential and important as an Orientalist than Goethe. Said ignores Ru
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our attention to the well-known influence of Arab poetry on the mediaeval Provenc al school of love poetry, which in turn influenced directly or indirectly so many of the German and non-German Romantic poets who were read, loved and quoted by Martha and Freud; but Goody also points to the importance through the centuries of non-European, Oriental and even African influxes or analogies on our Western cultural at least written experience and notions of love and of being in love. Both Freud and Martha, in their love as we read it in the Brautbriefe and then later on, could be said to confirm Goodys views.118 That is what makes this first volume of the Brautbriefe so unique and essential for psychoanalysis, and I am sure that this will be the case for all the other volumes too. The work of the Editors is an act of love for psychoanalysis and makes one fall in love with the love story which lies at the root of psychoanalysis itself, in spite of and I would say also because of the enormous difficulties that the editing of a work like this implies. Indeed, thinking too of some of the personal vicissitudes of some of the Editors, I wonder if it would not be appropriate to refer to what Walter Benjamin rightly called the acedia of the historian; the acedia that mediaeval theologians thought to be the root cause of sadness, of which Flaubert wrote: Few will be able to guess how sad one had to be in order to resuscitate Carthage [Peu de gens devineront combien il a fallu ^ etre triste pour ressusciter Carthage] (1970[1940], p. 258). The Editors work is an act of love that becomes particularly meaningful given that the psychoanalytic world of today seems too often to be remote from, and unwilling to understand, its own past and the emotionally speaking vital importance of its origins, its richness and its complexity, because it is focused only on its present, which is all too often supercilious, technology-driven and liquid. It is difficult to imagine today a young psychoanalyst giving pride of place in their living room to a statue of Lessing and to copies of his books. It is difficult to even imagine a bust of Freud in that living room! Better a plasma television, obviously. The Brautbriefe, in whatever form (I would accept them even in Kindle form if they could find a publisher willing to translate them comparable to the generous Fischer Verlag of Frankfurt), should be a required presence in the library, in the living room or in the consulting room, and be required reading for the young generations of psychoanalysts of today and of the future. After all, to quote again an ageless passage from a letter in the first volume of the Brautbriefe (Freud to Martha, 8 July 1882, Fichtner et al., 2011, p. 170) in which Freud comments on die Vergangenheit [the past] and die Gegenwart [the present], as if he were already a psychoanalyst:
118 All this can help us to further understand the links between psychoanalysis and Oriental forms of thinking, which is a fascinating issue in need of further exploration and understanding. Just think of B. Lows concept, the Nirvana principle, taken from Schopenhauers Buddhist readings, and its role in Freuds Jenseits des Lustprinzips [Beyond the Pleasure Principle] (1920, GW 13, p. 60; SE 18, pp. 556), not to mention Platos Symposium, which raises the problems of its Oriental sources too (Steiner, 2001). But remember too later on E. Fromm, or, in the UK, M. Milner and W. Bion, and their interest in Oriental thinking, to mention just a few names.
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One has to consider the past, since without understanding it one cannot enjoy the present; nor can one understand the present without knowing the past [Die Gegenwart kann man nicht genieen, ohne die zu verstehen, und nicht verstehen, ohne die Vergangenheit zu kennen] (Freud E et al., 1976, p. 92). In this case, I would also add, and without enjoying and loving the past too, as those love letters allow, I hope, many of us to do.
Acknowledgements
I would like to thank for their help Professor J Goody (Cambridge), I. Grunigsberg) Professor A Hirschmu ller (Tu bingen), M. Molnar brich Simitis (Ko (London) Professor J. Mitchell (Cambridge). D. Scott (London) has been of invaluable help too. Without the patient and creative editing of Tim Long (Perth) I would not have been able to submit this paper for publication.
References
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Die Brautbriefe: The Freud and Martha correspondence*

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Die Brautbriefe: The Freud and Martha correspondence

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Die Brautbriefe: The Freud and Martha correspondence

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Die Brautbriefe: The Freud and Martha correspondence

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Die Brautbriefe: The Freud and Martha correspondence

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Die Brautbriefe: The Freud and Martha correspondence

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Int J Psychoanal (2013) 94

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Die Brautbriefe: The Freud and Martha correspondence

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Int J Psychoanal (2013) 94

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Die Brautbriefe: The Freud and Martha correspondence

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Die Brautbriefe: The Freud and Martha correspondence

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Int J Psychoanal (2013) 94

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Die Brautbriefe: The Freud and Martha correspondence

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Die Brautbriefe: The Freud and Martha correspondence

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Int J Psychoanal (2013) 94

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Die Brautbriefe: The Freud and Martha correspondence

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Int J Psychoanal (2013) 94

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Die Brautbriefe: The Freud and Martha correspondence

The Freud & Martha Corespondence

The Freud & Martha Corespondence