Behavior: A Freudian Affair

Marie Bonaparte—Napoleon’s great-grandniece—was once asked by Sigmund Freud: “What does a woman want?” During 53 years of marriage, Freud’s wife Martha, a plain and gracious woman who scarcely bothered to understand his psychoanalytic theories, neither supplied nor demanded an answer. Now it appears Freud may have known all along, not as the pioneer of a revolutionary new approach to the human psyche, but as a man.

According to his anointed biographer, Ernest Jones, Freud was “quite peculiarly monogamous.” The truth, says Psychologist John M. Billinsky, 59, contradicts that judgment: during his marriage, Freud conducted a passionate affair with his wife’s younger sister, Minna Bernays, a large, imperious and imposing woman who lived with the Freuds for over 40 years. In the current issue of the Andover Newton Quarterly, published by the theological institution outside Boston where Billinsky is a professor, the author adds this humanizing revelation to the history of the founder of modern psychoanalysis.

Reason for Parting. A perfervid disciple of Carl Jung, who was one of several Freudian disciples to rebel against the master’s tutelage, Billinsky introduced his footnote not to illuminate Freud but to correct the official record on Jung’s apostasy. The record states that master and student parted for ideological reasons, principally because Jung refused to accept the Freudian tenet that virtually all human emotional problems could be traced to sex. The Jungian school enlarged the definition of the libido into a vital life-force, or Bergsonian élan, of which the sex drive is only a component—and not a very big one at that.

Had Billinsky not enrolled in Jung’s Zurich school during an academic sabbatical in 1957, this explanation might have stood. But Billinsky had several audiences with Jung, then in his 80s, during one of which, according to Billinsky, the apostate confided the real reasons he parted company with his mentor. In 1907, in a conversation that Billinsky transcribed, Jung said that he spent some time in the Freuds’ Viennese household and soon found out about the liaison between Freud and Minna. “From her,” said Jung, “I learned that Freud was in love with her and that their relationship was indeed very intimate.” This knowledge upset Jung so much that, without alluding to it directly, he suggested that Freud enter analysis—under Jung. Freud refused.

Image Repaired. By then, the master had begun to suspect that his leading disciple was eager to assume the mantle of successor. That knowledge may have helped widen the breach between them. But the parting came for another reason. “It was my knowledge of Freud’s triangle that became a very important factor in my break,” Jung told Billinsky. “And then I could not accept Freud’s placing authority above the truth. This too led to further problems in our relationship. In retrospect, it looks like it was destined that our relationship should end that way.”

Why did Billinsky wait so long to append his footnote? The reason, he explains, was the belated discovery last summer of 13 letters from Freud to the president of Clark University in Worcester, Mass., in connection with a series of lectures at that school during Freud’s only visit to the U.S. (TIME, Sept. 5). In one letter, Freud wrote bitterly of Jung: “If the real facts were more familiar to you, you would very likely not have thought that there was again a case where a father did not let his sons develop, but you would have seen that the sons wished to eliminate their father, as in ancient times.” Billinsky says he broke his silence to repair the Jungian image.

Billinsky’s exposé is risk free. Martha, Minna and the man they shared are silent in the grave.