Overview

Who was Martha Bernays, the Hamburg-born woman who, after a long and turbulent engagement and against the opposition of her mother, married the Viennese doctor Sigmund Freud and lived at his side for more than fifty years as wife and mother of six? How did she feel, coming from a traditional Jewish family but living in a household with no religious background? How did she cope with the challenge of being married to the man whose work revolutionized our ways of thinking about human sexuality? In this, the first biography of Martha Freud, Katja Behling portrays this remarkable woman, whose loyalty and steadfastness contributed in no small measure to the extraordinary success of psychoanalysis as it went from strength to strength and spread from Vienna to the four corners of the earth. 

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9781509560653

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Reviews

"""A remarkable story."" —Prospect ""Behling evokes a Martha who is a far more substantial woman that the 'adored sweetheart in youth' and 'beloved wife in maturity' Freud apostrophized. This book stands alone or as worthy companion to any biography of Freud."" —Lisa Appignanesi ""Finally a long overdue biography of Martha Freud gives us an authentic picture of the family life of her husband, Sigmund Freud. Speculations about Freud's personal life which range from the trivial to the salacious will need to shop short on the frontier of this excellent portrait of a highly ethical and decent human being and the hard work and the love it takes to establish and transmit these qualities. Martha Freud constructed a network of child- and husband-care and social concern whose inspiration and independence prohibits dismissive attitudes towards the traditional stereotype of the good hausfrau under which she has laboured. Behling's book gives us a picture of a particular woman which makes us rethink our general categories."" —Juliet Mitchell, University of Cambridge"

Author Information

Katja Behling was born in 1963. She studied for a PhD in Medicine and trained as a psychotherapist whilst also working as a medical journalist. She currently live in Hamburg and is the author of Zu Tisch bei Sigmund Freud (Vienna, 2000).

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