The Man in Private Life

A neatly trimmed beard, well dressed, upright posture. His glowering eyes analytically focused on the beholder, the ever-present cigar in hand. Sigmund Freud is known throughout the world in countless reproductions of such images. The most famous of these photos was shot by his son-in-law Max Halberstadt, which gives rise to an interesting subtext: the person so pierced by Freud's scrutinizing gaze is the husband of his beloved daughter Sophie.

Freud's relationship to Halberstadt was better than the photograph would lead one to expect, as is demonstrated by a touching letter written on the occasion of the couple's engagement. In the letter, Freud ceremoniously puts Sophie in Halberstadt's hands, expressing his affection for his daughter and his trust in his newly won son-in-law. The marriage began well in 1913, but it was abruptly ended by Sophie's tragic death seven years later at the age of twenty-seven. Freud, who had been hit hard by his father's death in 1896, had great difficulty in overcoming this loss. In the letters surrounding these tragic blows of fate, an emotional side of Freud's personality emerges that to this day has remained little known. According to his biographers, Freud was distanced in his personal relationships. In his letters, however, he could be loving, confiding and supportive, and some written in his younger years even reveal impassioned outbreaks of feeling. The letters to his fiancée Martha Bernays, written during their engagement when she was living in Hamburg, are replete with passages poetically expressing his love and yearning. An intensive correspondence evolved with Martha over the years, and with her sister Minna Bernays as well, who after the death of her fiancé moved into the family apartment at Berggasse 19, living there until the end of her life as the unwed "Aunt Minna".

Alongside his intensive work life, which was characterized by a daily schedule filled with analysis sessions followed by work at his desk until late into the night, Freud found little time for other pursuits. Nonetheless, his enthusiasm for travelling is well documented, and weekly meetings to play tarok (a card game) as well as occasional cafe visits were his most frequent recreation. His brother Alexander Freud was an important partner in these leisure activities. Ten years younger than Sigmund and also academically distinguished – as a professor at the forerunner of the Vienna Economic University – he was a confidant, travel companion and tarok partner. According to the biographical literature, life alongside young Sigmund was often difficult for the Freud siblings: precocious and intellectually gifted, he soon developed the ambition that remained characteristic throughout his life. Many of his letters to Martha and to the friend of his youth Eduard Silberstein provide insight into his education. Called "Golden Sigi" by his mother, Freud was at the head of his class for many years, and he made no secret of his feelings of superiority.

Freud's development from a young physician into a recognized theoretician is well documented in his correspondence with Wilhelm Fliess. Beginning in 1887, Freud exchanged opinions on theoretical, medical and private issues with the Berlin doctor, and a close friendship soon developed between them. In these letters Freud is astonishingly candid and approachable, often showing a great sense of humour. Freud openly wrote of his cocaine consumption, as he did in his letters to Martha – at the time no laws prohibited the narcotic, and thus he saw no reason to keep his use of it a secret. The friendship between the two doctors was primarily based in the lack of recognition their revolutionary theories received in the world of established medicine. Born in 1858, Fliess was an ear, nose and throat specialist in Berlin, where he also engaged in studies of cyclical processes of illness and health. Although he served as president of the German Academy of Sciences, he was never able to achieve any significant scientific success. Freud not only entrusted Fliess with reading his manuscripts: he also shared intimate aspects of his life and emotions with him. Thus his letters relate his sorrow at the death of his father and his joy at the birth of his children. With time Freud and Fliess came into conflict over scientific issues, which strained their friendship and eventually led them to break off contact. In 1904, after years without any exchange of letters, Fliess accused Freud of having communicated his theories to the controversial young Austrian philosopher Otto Weininger, who attracted great attention in presenting them as his own. The former friends' alienation became a spiteful break.

From 1923 onward, Freud's life was overshadowed by his affliction with cancer. Left for weeks in a state of uncertainty by his doctors, Freud himself knew quite well what the tumour on his jaw would mean. Having until then paid little heed to his health, he was forced to adhere to a strict regimen, whereby quitting smoking (up to twenty cigars per day) became a drawn-out struggle. Freud underwent a total of thirty-three operations on his jaw and palate. Undaunted, he continued work on his writings, although in public his daughter Anna increasingly became his mouthpiece: the operations and the oral prosthesis he was forced to wear made it difficult for him to speak, and thus she read his papers at international conferences, becoming what he would later refer to as his "Antigone". It was also her arrest by the Gestapo following the National Socialist take-over in 1938 that finally convinced Freud to leave Vienna, at the age of eighty-two, and face the ordeal of fleeing to England. Marie Bonaparte, Princess of Denmark and Greece, played a key role in facilitating the move. Passages from Freud's correspondence with her bear witness to the close relationship that she had developed with the family over the years. On 23 September 1939, marked by age and his struggle with cancer, Freud voluntarily ended his life with the aid of his trusted physician Max Schur.

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1 "Friends are after all the most precious acquisitions ..."

2 "I don't deny that I like to be right."

3 "Anyone who writes a biography is committed to lies, concealments, hypocrisy, flattery and even to hide his own lack of understanding, for biographical truth does not exist, and if it did we could not use it."

4 "... Not all men are worthy of love."

5 "It is impossible to escape the impression that people commonly use false standards of measurement – that they seek power, success and wealth for themselves and admire them in others, and that they underestimate what is of true value in life."

6 "With the help of the necessary boldness and lack of conscience, it is not difficult to amass a large fortune, and for such...