Vienna,
1895. Minna Bernays, a laughably incompetent lady's companion, moves in
with her sister Martha and Martha's husband, Sigmund Freud. Freud, a
39-year-old struggling professor of the fledgling field of
psychotherapy, is charmed by the intellectually-minded Minna, who
attends to the Freuds' 6 children and, owing in part to her fascination
with her brother-in-law's work, begins enjoying his romantic attention
as well.
Or at least that's how Karen Mack and Jennifer Kaufman
tell it in their new novel, Freud's Mistress. Whether or not Sigmund and
Minna actually entered into a sexual relationship has long been
debated. But a 2006 discovery of a Swiss hotel log showing that the pair
once checked into a hotel room as husband and wife offers some fairly
convincing evidence.
While the authors do an impressive job
evoking late 19th-century Vienna, the most remarkable aspect of this
novel is meeting Sigmund Freud, lover.
Can we really come to
embrace the father of psychology as a character who says things like, "I
will indeed unlock the mystery of your dreams. And you, my dear"?
Well…now that we think about it—maybe we can.
- Elie Lichtschein for Jewniverse
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