Martha Bernays
Martha Bernays | |
|---|---|
| File:Martha Bernays.jpg Martha Bernays (1882) | |
| Born | 26 July 1861 |
| Died | 2 November 1951 (aged 90) London, England |
| Spouse | Sigmund Freud (m.1886–1939; his death) |
| Children | 6, including Ernst and Anna |
| Relatives | Isaac Bernays (grandfather) Michael Bernays (uncle) Edward Bernays (nephew) |
Martha Bernays (/bɜːrˈneɪz/ bur-NAYZ, German: [bɛʁˈnaɪs]; 26 July 1861 – 2 November 1951) was the wife of Austrian psychoanalyst Sigmund Freud. Bernays was the second daughter of Emmeline and Berman Bernays. Her paternal grandfather Isaac Bernays was a Chief Rabbi of Hamburg.
Background
Courtship and marriage
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Sigmund Freud and Martha met in April 1882 and after a four-year engagement (1882–1886) they were married on 14 September 1886 in Hamburg.[1] Freud and Bernays's love letters sent during the engagement years, according to Freud's official biographer Ernest Jones, who read all the letters, "would be a not unworthy contribution to the great love literature of the world." Freud sent over 900 (lengthy) letters to his fiancée, which chart the ups and downs of a tempestuous relationship, marred by outbreaks of jealousy on his part as well as affirmations that "I love you with a kind of passionate enchantment".[2] Martha Freud died in 1951. She was cremated at Golders Green Crematorium and her ashes placed in the Freud Corner, into the same ancient Greek funeral urn that holds her husband's ashes.
Character
Ménage à trois?
This claim was (and is) controversial. The publication of a hotel log from 1898 registering the pair as "Dr Sigm Freud u frau" in a double room prompted some Freud scholars, including his defender Peter Gay, to regard the conjecture of Freud and Minna having an affair as possibly accurate.[3][4] Other proponents of the affair, however — relying on their analysis of Freud's own autobiographical writings — believe that it was consummated only in 1900.[5]
See also
References
- ↑ Letters of Sigmund Freud; selected and edited by Ernst L. Freud, Basic Books, 1960; p. 7 ISBN 0-486-27105-6
- ↑ Ernest Jones, The Life and Work of Sigmund Freud (1964) pp. 109, 116-119, 133
- ↑ Blumenthal, Ralph (24 December 2006). "Hotel log hints at desire that Freud didn't repress - Europe - International Herald Tribune". The New York Times. Retrieved 4 November 2014.
- ↑ Eysenck, Hans. Decline and Fall of the Freudian Empire. Transaction Publishers, 2004
- ↑ Peter L. Rudnytsky, Rescuing Psychoanalysis from Freud: And Other Essays in Re-Vision, Karnac Books, Ltd. (2011); Routledge (2018), p. 17
Further reading
- Katja Behling, Martha Freud: A Biography, Cambridge: Polity Press, 2005 (translated by Rupert Glasgow from the German Martha Freud: Die Frau des Genies, Berlin: Aufbau, 2002)
- Esti D. Freud, "Mrs Sigmund Freud", Jewish Spectator, XLV (1980) 29-31
- Martin Freud, Sigmund Freud: Man and Father (1958)