Last Chance Freud, Sigmund. (1856–1939) Autograph Psychological Analysis, Signed No Hidden Fees [c3xviCMa]

As hinted at in this note, Freud's views on marriage were undoubtedly problematic by today's standards. Recent scholars have been able to examine his own relationship with his wife-to-be, Martha Bernays, through the Brautbriefe (engagement letters) they exchanged over their four years of courtship in the 1880's. In Freud: The Making of an Illusion (2017), Frederick Crews writes: "In the ... engagement letters, we see Freud was already experiencing a problem that he would one day ascribe to all men: an inability, held over from early childhood, to reconcile female sexuality with maternal purity and devotion. His bride was supposed to arrive intact, submissive, and sexually ignorant, but also to reciprocate a lust that he hoped would outlast the honeymoon. Yet she was also expected to coddle him as her indulged son. That role, in Freud’s estimation, was a woman’s highest calling. As he would put it in 1933, 'Even a marriage is not made secure until the wife has succeeded in making her husband her child as well and in acting as a mother to him.' " According to Crews, Freud shows a need to shape his fiancée into "a properly deferential mate," even telling her that "you are only a guest in your family, like a gem that I have pawned and that I am going to redeem as soon as I am rich."