The correspondence of the founder of psychoanalysis with family members shows that Freud was not at all a misogynist, as many people think. He loved his wife and daughters, was close to his children, and his family was little different from other families.
“Letters of Sigmund Freud to children (1907-1939). Unpublished Correspondence” and “Correspondence 1904-1938 of Sigmund Freud and Anna Freud” change the established view of Freud. These books have not yet been published in Russian, but have already been published in France.
And thanks to them, we see not a stern scientist, but a shrewd man with a lively sense of humor and an enthusiastic father, who, shortly after the birth of his eldest daughter Matilda, writes: “My baby is developing remarkably, and know that she sleeps at night, which any father can be proud of!”
Freud named children after people he loved. For example, Mathilde (1887–1978) was named after the wife of Josef Breuer, a colleague and close friend of Freud. And the eldest son Jean Martin (1889-1967) was named after the outstanding neurologist Jean Martin Charcot, with whom Freud studied in Paris. The name of the middle son Olivier, nicknamed Oli (1891–1969), was reminiscent of Freud’s passion for the English commander and Lord Protector Oliver Cromwell.
The younger son Ernst (1892–1966) became the namesake of the physiologist Ernst Brücke, a professor at the University of Vienna who supported Freud early in his career. The middle daughter Sophie (1893–1920) was named after the wife of her grandfather’s close friend, Freud’s father.
The younger Anna (1895–1982) most likely owes her name to the daughter of Freud’s favorite Hebrew teacher.
Sophie was famous for her beauty, but Matilda’s appearance did not cause great enthusiasm. She liked to read and listen to opera, she highly valued her father’s ideas and herself dreamed of a research activity, for which, alas, she lacked the ability.
In the footsteps of her father, the younger and more persistent daughter Anna managed to follow. However, she had to fight for the right to become his student and get recognition from his mouth: growing old, he would call her his Antigone, the name of the daughter of the Theban king Oedipus.
Freud coped well with his father’s role. At least if we accept the psychoanalytic definition of a “good father”
Freud did not insist that all six of his offspring become psychoanalysts. Martin trained as a lawyer. Oli is an engineer, but he had a close encounter with psychoanalysis when he was diagnosed with obsessive neurosis. Ernst became an architect.
We can say that Freud coped well with his father’s role. At least if we accept the psychoanalytic definition of a “good father”: a person who is able to establish authority, set guidelines, while respecting the individuality of his children and allowing them to develop in their own way.
No moralizing, no taboo
From autumn to spring, Freud worked tirelessly from dawn to dusk. He saw patients or retired to his office to meditate and take notes, silent, with a perpetual cigar in his mouth. However, in the summer the whole family gathered in a country house, and family ties were restored.
Numerous letters testify to the fact that the entire Freud family was extremely fascinated by mountains, forests, nature and its inhabitants.
The children were not directly involved in their father’s activities, but they were not completely aloof either: they knew most of his colleagues and patients. Freud did not impose anything on his offspring, they naturally joined the “daddy’s therapeutic method.” As a child, Martin was very proud of being “the eldest son of Sigmund Freud”.
Early writings show that Freud treats children as young adults, endowed with individuality, ready for marriage or marriage.
From the side of the father, no moralizing, no taboo topics. When talking about health with his daughters, Freud does not hesitate to mention menstruation and describe the diseased body in its most unsightly manifestations.
Respect does not interfere with frankness – he explains to Matilda that many of his students and patients dream of marrying her because of the transference mechanism: the emotional bond that arises between the patient and the therapist makes them feel tender feelings for his daughter. So she should not build illusions.
His generosity is based on the belief that his children do not need anything.
In 1912, Freud wrote to Sophie’s fiancé, the photographer Max Halberstadt, with his unusual sense of humor: “My little Sophie returned peaceful, happy, without a shadow of a doubt, and told me that she was engaged to you. We realized that we had no choice but to complete the formalities and give our blessing. Our only desire has always been that our daughters give love in accordance with their free choice, as our eldest did, so we can only rejoice at this event.
Freud expresses an opinion about the choice of his children, but never allows himself to forbid or restrain their desires. He knows how to warmly accept their spouses, so that they never feel like “second-class” members of the family.
“Sticking together” is Freud’s motto, which helps him to keep his presence of mind in the most difficult moments, during illness or the Nazi threat. In his letters to children, he almost always writes “we” or “me and mom.” And this is a decisive blow to the theory that Freud was a patriarchal misogynist and did not put his wife Martha in anything.
He provides financial support to his children and grandchildren, even adults, if they are unemployed or do not have enough money for treatment. Freud himself lacked support during his studies and at the beginning of his professional career, and he wants to help his children. There is no sense of superiority in this. His impeccable generosity is based on “that knowledge of a Jewish father, which he needs like air both in life and in death – the confidence that his children do not need anything.”
When Sophie died of influenza pneumonia in 1920, Freud lost the will to live. He could not forget his daughter and kept her portrait in a locket. But three years later he suffered a new loss – his beloved grandson Heinerle tragically disappeared.
Freud despaired because “there was not a single human being, and even less a child, who would be as dear to him as this boy.”
Freud wrote regularly to the spouses of his children and maintained contact with Max Halberstadt until his death. In November 1928, already an old and ill man, he wrote to his son Ernst: “It was a precious experience for me to understand how much you can learn from your own children.”
Anna, “only daughter”
An unwanted child, Anna was born in the same year as psychoanalysis, in 1895. And subsequently she did everything to become indispensable for her father, who did not want her to be born.
“Recently I had a dream that you were a king and I was a princess and there was a war between us,” she wrote to her father in August 1915. Was it an echo of the Oedipus complex, when the daughter wants to overcome her rival mother? Freud eventually referred to Anna as his “only daughter”.
In the unpublished correspondence between father and daughter, one can feel a professional attitude. Anna became the first woman in the family who received a profession: she studied to be a school teacher. In 1918, she begins to be analyzed by her father.
According to many of today’s experts, this practice borders on incest. But let’s not forget that at that time it was a common occurrence. The first analysts analyzed their children, spouses, lovers.
Psychoanalysis allowed Anna to realize that her libido was directed towards women. Freud, the inventor of the revolutionary theory of sexuality, was horrified at the thought that his daughter was a lesbian. To turn her away from this tendency, which frightened Anna herself, Freud encourages her intellectual work.
Eventually, with the support of her father, Anna became the head child psychoanalyst of the Vienna School and lived her life with her friend Dorothy Burlingham.