-Caveat Lector- Martha, the woman who loved Freud but hated his 'porn' http://www.observer.co.uk/international/story/0,6903,896682,00.html Hannah Cleaver in Hamburg Sunday February 16, 2003 The Observer
He laid the foundations of modern thinking about sex, families and relationships, but his own private life has been largely ignored. Now new research has thrown light on the woman behind Sigmund Freud - his strong-willed wife, Martha. A woman ahead of her time, she was Freud's greatest inspiration, sharing his appetite for cocaine, although not for sex. She was the reason he became a psychoanalyist, but then described his work as 'pornography'. The first biography of Martha Freud is to be published in Germany, detailing her own life, which saw her all but end sexual relations with her husband after the birth of their sixth child, and looking at her influence on him. Examining hundreds of letters written between the couple as well as other evidence from records, diaries and surviving family members, Katja Behling believes that if he had not met Martha, Freud would have made his name and career as a scientist perfecting the use of cocaine in medicine. Freud was one of the first to work with cocaine, experimenting with it on himself. It lifted his mood and gave him energy, and he was so excited that he sent packets to Martha, telling her it would bring colour to her cheeks. Noticing its efficacy as an anaesthetic, he planned to work further on those properties, but instead concentrated on romancing Martha. While he was away, a colleague picked up where he had left off, making his name and a fortune. Freud later said his 53 years with Martha were worth the loss of that success. Behling's research portrays Freud as far from a cold appraiser of human behaviour. He was a deeply romantic as well as a passionately jealous man who fell in love with Martha at first sight. But Martha, from a respected, strictly orthodox Jewish family, was expected to marry better than a penniless atheist with no position in society and they kept their engagement secret for as long as they could. When Martha's mother, Emmeline, moved her daughters from Vienna to Hamburg, it was the start of a four-year separation during which the lovers saw each other only a dozen or so times. 'They wrote hundreds of letters to each other,' said Behling. 'I think you can say Martha was really the world's first pupil in psychoanalysis.' Freud's jealousy was expressed in one dictatorial letter forbidding her from ice skating as it meant gliding about arm-in-arm with another man. Martha spent her time helping in the house she shared with her sister, Minna, and their mother. She read and loved the theatre. But her interest in the arts upset Freud, who fretted that as a scientist he had no weapons against artists, saying all they had to do was to write a song for a woman and they had the key to her heart. After he had progressed enough in his medical career to satisfy her mother, Martha moved to Vienna and they wed, having six children within eight years. At the same time Freud was causing scandal. Talking to women about sex was taboo, let alone writing about them enjoying it or fantasising. After Hitler drove the Freuds into exile in Britain, Freud developed cancer, which afflicted him until he could bear it no longer and persuaded a friend to administer a morphine overdose. 'She changed,' said Behling. 'The first Friday after his death she lit candles, reviving the Jewish tradition he had persuaded her to drop. I think she kept her religion inside her the whole time. 'She could have chosen a safe professor to marry and have lived in probably frustrated contentment. But she had spirit and chose a far more rocky, but interesting path, in partnership with the man she loved.' Guardian Unlimited � Guardian Newspapers Limited 2003 Forwarded for your information. 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