Since Freud comes up on this list frequently, and the discovery of the
Freud-Minna Bernays affair was discussed earlier, I thought that this
interview with the discoverer of the hotel slip where Freud listed them
as "man and wife" would be of interest to some. The complex interweaving
of traditional historical methods and pyschoanalytic "insights" is
particularly striking.
(Thanks to Hendrika Vande Kemp who forwarded this to the list of the
"Society for the History of Psychology" (APA Div 26), from which I
forwarded it to TIPS.)
Regards,
--
Christopher D. Green
Department of Psychology
York University
Toronto, ON M3J 1P3
Canada
[EMAIL PROTECTED]
http://www.yorku.ca/christo/
phone: 416-736-5115 ext. 66164
fax: 416-736-5814
-------- Original Message --------
Expert Interview
Did Freud Sleep With His Wife's Sister? An Expert Interview With Franz
Maciejewski, PhD
Medscape Psychiatry & Mental Health. 2007; ¨2007 Medscape
Posted 05/04/2007
Editor's Note:
A recent discovery by Franz Maciejewski, PhD, a German sociologist,
about an
alleged sexual relationship between Sigmund Freud and his sister-in-law,
Minna Bernays, originally noted in the national German newspaper
Frankfurter
Allgemeine, led to a worldwide media furor. Research had previously
established that the two shared a trip to Maloja in Oberengadin,
Switzerland, in August 1898. While researching his book, The Moses of
Sigmund Freud, Dr. Maciejewski followed the path that Freud and Bernays had
taken over a century before. On his sojourn, he discovered a single room in
the names of Freud and Bernays at the Hotel Schweizerhaus in Maloja, in
which Freud himself had registered them as "man and wife." Alma H. Bond,
PhD, Fellow, former faculty member, Institute of Psychoanalytic Training
and
Research, New York, NY, interviewed Dr. Maciejewski by email on behalf of
Medscape about his discovery and the impact that it may have on the future
of psychoanalysis.
Medscape: First, kindly tell us something about your background. Are you a
psychoanalyst as well as a sociologist?
Dr. Maciejewski: I am a sociologist with a PhD from Frankfurt, Germany, and
also trained in psychoanalysis in Z¨rich, Switzerland.
Medscape: If I may venture to ask, were you ever in analysis yourself? If
so, of what school of analysis was your analyst? Do you consider your
analysis a success?
Dr. Maciejewski: Sure; I was in analysis. It was done by a Freudian analyst
in a classic setting, and I consider it a success.
Medscape: How did you first become interested in the subject? What in your
life prepared you to undertake such a difficult search?
Dr. Maciejewski: Well, the starting point of my research was not the
"chronique scandaleuse" of the so-called "Minna question" raised by Peter
Gay,[1,2] but rather, another unsolved enigma of Freud's biography: Why did
Freud's identification with the figure of Moses have the character of an
obsession?
I learned from Ernest Jones[3] that Freud's younger and early deceased
brother Julius possibly was called by his second Jewish name,
"Moshe.[4]" If
so, this could explain something of a hidden "Moses complex." As there was
no entry of the birth or circumcision of Julius to confirm Jones'
supposition, I had to go the way of text exegesis. I knew, like other
scholars, that the secret of Julius' second name was obviously inscribed in
the first case of the forgetting of a proper name -- a slip that Freud
mentioned in a letter to his friend Fliess, "Julius Mosen," the name of a
German poet and author.[5] I considered the Freudian slip of Julius Mosen
(not uncovered by any scholar so far) as a big challenge.[6,7]
The first result of my investigation was, surprisingly enough, that the
Julius Mosen slip took place during the first trip that Sigmund and Minna
took together, which led the founder of psychoanalysis and his
sister-in-law
via Austria's northern Tirol to the Upper Engadine in Switzerland.
I pinned my hope on the belief that I might find the necessary material to
decipher the slip in question if I myself would travel the ways that
Sigmund
and Minna had walked a century or so before. I was on the track that would
ultimately bring me to Maloja, the place preserving the secret of Freud's
second "wife."
For solving the puzzle of the Julius Mosen, see my recent book, The
Moses of
Sigmund Freud.[6] Only the German edition is available so far.
Medscape: Do you intend to write a book about your discovery and your quest
for the truth about the father of psychoanalysis?
Dr. Maciejewski: Yes. I intend to write a book about the secret of Freud's
love affair with Minna Bernays; it is already on the way and will be
published in autumn.
Medscape: How long did your research take? Was it a labor of love, an
obsession, or simply a scholarly exercise? Would you undertake it again, if
you had to do it over?
Dr. Maciejewski: My research took about 2 years. In August 2005, I spent my
holidays in exactly the historical places of Freud and Bernays' first
unaccompanied trip. Step by step, I had to learn that the enigma of Julius
Mosen included the 2 sides of an ambivalent whole: hatred and love, the
"murder" of the brother (Julius), and the incestuous love with the
sister-in-law (Minna). I understood that Julius (whom Freud had greeted at
birth with death wishes) returned as a revenant of days of old on that
journey with Minna because his imago had the power to reanimate the
emotions
accompanying the first dangerous liaison in the life of Freud -- his
passionate love for his mother, Amalia.
I finished the first part of my research without asking for the hotel
guestbook in Maloja. However, in the springtime of 2006, when I got the
proofs of my book, a feeling of "you forgot something" crept over me, a
feeling not to be refused. Following that inspiration, I took the
journey to
the Upper Engadine a second time in August 2006. This time I asked the
manager of the hotel whether the hotel had preserved the guestbook from the
end of the 19th century. That being the case, I was given the
opportunity to
examine the "Fremdenbuch 1883."
Although the subject of my research was obsessional love, my own work was
simply scholarly exercise. And, yes, I would undertake it again, if I
had to
do so.
Medscape: What were your feelings when you discovered Freud's registration
in the register of the Hotel Schweizerhaus? You wrote that you believed
that
there was something unknown that Freud felt guilty about. Were you glad or
sorry to have your ingenious hunch confirmed?
Dr. Maciejewski: I knew as a matter of documental record that Freud and his
companion terminated their trip in Maloja, staying there for 3 days or 2
nights in the venerable Hotel Schweizerhaus. Under the appropriate date
(August 13, 1898) was to be found, as one would expect, the handwritten
registration of Freud, but with quite an unexpected twist. When I realized
what I had seen, I enjoyed an overwhelming feeling of pride. I saw writing
on the wall that no one had seen before.
We have to value all available documents and proofs. My finding is part
of a
puzzle. However, for sure, we are not at the beginning of a case of
circumstantial evidence, but rather at the end, based mainly on the report
by [Carl Gustav] Jung [in an interview published after his death in
1969, in
which Minna confessed her affair with Freud to Jung in 1907][8]; the
testimony of Freud's friend [Sandor] Ferenczi; and, more recently, on the
strength of the research of Peter Swales [who studied Freud for 25 years]
(Swales PJ, unpublished draft, 1998).[9,10]
To make my position a little clearer, I was convinced that Freud and Minna
had a love affair before my own finding. The force of my arguments
developed
from text exegesis (for example, the Julius Mosen slip, dreams, and letters
of Freud's). Here, it is the logic of the unconscious, a genuine Freudian
path, that confronted me with the same result.
Medscape: Some people believe that there are possible explanations, other
than the sexual one, for why Freud and Minna shared a room, such as
financial reasons or the fact that in those days it was not unusual for
family members to share a room. Do you personally believe that Freud and
Minna had an affair? If so, how do you feel about the morality of the
situation?
Dr. Maciejewski: My finding does not raise in the first degree the question
of morality; I mean, it is not the time of scorn. On the contrary, through
having now been exposed as altogether fallible, Freud paradoxically
gains in
being seen as someone human, all too human.
Medscape: Has Freud been an important influence in your life? Does your
discovery change your estimation of his character?
Dr. Maciejewski: Yes indeed; Freud has been an important influence in my
life, and this will be the case in the future. In "discovering the Freud
beneath Freud," I do not like to hang a name on Freud or degrade his
character. I fight for a progress in psychoanalysis that for the genius of
the master would never have come into being.
Medscape: How do you feel about the tremendous response that your discovery
has provoked? Are you surprised, or did you expect such an uproar?
Dr. Maciejewski: I am surprised about the tremendous response that my
discovery has provoked. It is due, I believe, to the work of Freud's
hagiographers who, time and again, have presented us with the picture of a
scientific saint. Freud was a genius but not infallible. We can notice 2
extreme reactions. I do not share either: the Freud basher on the one hand
and the Freudian hardliner on the other hand.
Medscape: What effect do you believe that your discovery will have on our
perception of the validity of psychoanalysis and its future?
Dr. Maciejewski: The affair with a sister-in-law is no mere amorous
escapade
whose impact lies only in the sphere of biographical study. Notwithstanding
all the controversy over time, scholars have never doubted that a possible
relationship of Sigmund and Minna would count as incest (brother-sister
incest or maybe even as mother-son incest -- Minna in a role as "second
mother"). The desire for incest is central within Freud's oedipal paradigm.
So the question arises of whether (or how) the biographical actuality may
have influenced that theory.
One conclusion may be that psychoanalysis can no longer be held together by
appeals to the personal integrity of its founder, but only by its heuristic
power as a complex theoretical system. This change in psychoanalysis as a
scientific project will generate, in my opinion, an even better
psychoanalysis than the original Freudian theory and therapy ever has been.
Medscape: Thank you, Dr. Maciejewski, for your informative and courageous
responses.
References
1.. Gay P. Reading Freud. Explorations and Entertainments. New
Haven: Yale University Press; 1990.
2.. Gay P. Freud: A Life of Our Time. New York: WW Norton & Co;
1998.
3.. Jones E. Sigmund Freud -- life and work. AROPA. Copyright
1998-2006. Available at: http://www.freudfile.org/jones.html Accessed April
25, 2007.
4.. Maciejewski F. Shadows of Freiberg. Was Julius Freud born in
Roznau? [in German]. Luzif Amor. 2006;19:19-31.
5.. Freud S, Masson JM. Letter from Freud to Fliess, August 26,
1898. The Complete Letters of Sigmund Freud to Wilhelm Fliess, 1887-1904.
Cambridge, Mass: Belknap Press; 1985:323-325.
6.. Maciewjewski F. The Moses of Sigmund Freud (Der Moses des
Sigmund Freud.) Göttingen, Germany; Ein unheimlicher Bruder; 2006.
7.. Maciejewski F. Freud, his wife, and his "wife." Am Imago.
2006;63:497-506.
8.. Burke J. Freud's First Slip? March 3, 2007. Available at:
http://www.theage.com.au/news/books/freuds-first-slip/2007/03/01/1172338791947.html
Accessed April 25, 2007.
9.. Swales PJ. Freud, Minna Bernays, and the conquest of Rome. New
light on the origins of psychoanalysis. New Am Rev. 1982;1:1-23.
10.. Davis D. Dr. Freud, "Herr Aliquis," and "free association."
Available at: http://www.haverford.edu/psych/ddavis/p109g/aliquis.html
Accessed April 25, 2007.
Franz Maciejewski, PhD, Ritual Studies Department, Heidelberg University,
Heidelberg, Germany
Disclosure: Franz Maciejewski, PhD, has disclosed no relevant financial
relationships.
Disclosure: Alma H. Bond, PhD, has disclosed no relevant financial
relationships.
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