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 Zürich, 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

Gay P. Reading Freud. Explorations and Entertainments.
New Haven: Yale University Press; 1990.
Gay P. Freud: A Life of Our Time. New York: WW Norton
& Co; 1998.
Jones E. Sigmund Freud -- life and work. AROPA.
Copyright 1998-2006. Available at:
http://www.freudfile.org/jones.html Accessed April 25,
2007.
Maciejewski F. Shadows of Freiberg. Was Julius Freud
born in Roznau? [in German]. Luzif Amor.
2006;19:19-31.
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.
Maciewjewski F. The Moses of Sigmund Freud (Der Moses
des Sigmund Freud.) Göttingen, Germany; Ein
unheimlicher Bruder; 2006.
Maciejewski F. Freud, his wife, and his "wife." Am
Imago. 2006;63:497-506.
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.h\
tml
Accessed April 25, 2007.
Swales PJ. Freud, Minna Bernays, and the conquest of
Rome. New light on the origins of psychoanalysis. New
Am Rev. 1982;1:1-23.
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




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