Freud's Mistress

Did Sigmund Freud, married and father of six, have a mistress? If so, was it his wife's sister?  And did he have many lovers during his marriage to Martha?

Co-authors of Freud's Mistress, Karen Mack and Jennifer Kaufman, must have spent years researching Freud's life and work, fashion and politics of Vienna from 1895 to Freud's death forty years later.  Before his death, Freud and his immediate family escaped Vienna and moved to London, but his sisters were sent to concentration camps.  Virginia Woolf was one of his last visitors before he died of throat cancer.

But as to the affair with Martha's sister, Minna?  Carl Jung (former friend and colleague with whom he'd parted ways by then) affirmed that it happened, and there are other hints that support the likelihood, but there's no solid evidence, possibly because the letters between the two were destroyed by his daughter.

This book of historical fiction goes with the theory that they were lovers for several years, then Minna remained in their household for forty years after the affair ended.

I picked up this book at Dollar Tree when I went to get aspirin on Sunday and found it hard to put down.  The authors built conversations about Freud's research into dreams and psychology based on his many writings and letters--though his letters to Minna were not in the files of correspondence in the Freud museum.  The concluding chapter of the book is chilling to read--as Minna, on her death bed, asks her sister to destroy the letters.

It's a bit unnerving that a 2013 book of this quality could wind up in the dollar store four years later, but I'm glad I found it. It's been an interesting read, historical facts woven together with imagined scenes and settings that seem to have been written by someone who was actually there in Vienna in the late 1800s. Ironically, at the lecture tonight, the speaker showed a slide of himself dressed up like Sigmund Freud for Halloween.  A strange little synchronicity.