First Shared Fantasy: Freud and Martha

As Freud 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.”

In the same juvenile vein, Freud morosely reminded his fiancée that their ideal happiness couldn’t last for long, because “dangerous rivals soon appear: household and nursery.”

She was told from the outset that she would be expected to serve his needs, manage his domestic existence, and honor his decisions in all other matters. The dollhouse diminutives with which he addressed her only reinforced the message that his darling girl was to live only for him, exercising no individual will.

As Ernest Jones observed with unusual bravery, Freud was insisting on nothing less than “complete identification with himself, his opinions, his feelings and his intentions. She was not really his unless he could perceive his ‘stamp’ on her.”32 And again, the relationship “must be quite perfect; the slightest blur was not to be tolerated. At times it seemed as if his goal was fusion rather than union.”

LITERATURE

Freud: The Making of an Illusion by Frederick Crews

Find and Buy MOST of my BOOKS and eBOOKS in my Amazon Store