Freud and Popular History

A big historical mystery has been solved- Freud did have an affair with his wife's younger sister, Minna Bernays. It was reported in the New York Times on Christmas Eve. Franz Maciejewski, a sociologist formerly at the University of Heidelberg, tracked down a leather-bound ledger that shows Freud and Minna Bernays stayed in the Schweizerhaus, an inn in Maloja in the Swiss Alps, on August 13, 1898. They stayed in Room 11, and Freud signed in the book, "Dr Sigm Freud u frau,"abbreviated German for “Dr. Sigmund Freud and wife.”

(By the way, Freud's handwriting sucks. Compared to the guy's signature above him, he can't write straight or clearly.) So there you have it, one signature to offset our whole thinking of the father of psychoanalysis.

It's interesting, however, that Freud's affair would be such big news. Understandably, Freud scholars have always had to confront this historical question, but what surprises me is that it seems like another celebrity "who's sleeping with who" game. There are plenty of historical figures who have had extramarital affairs. Here are just three other figures that I'm aware of:

- Martin Luther King, Jr.

Although David Garrow's work "Bearing the Cross" is not available online, it was the first well-known look at MLK's life that brought to my attention King's extramarital activities. As the MLK Research and Education Institute notes, after the March on Washington for Jobs and Freedom in 1963, FBI director J. Edgar Hoover stepped up his "effort to damage King's reputation by leaking information gained through surreptitious means about King's ties with former communists and his extramarital affairs." This FBI evidence, no matter how politically motivated, is not disputed or denied. Yet King is still presented as a morally righteous figure and his reputation has not sufferred at all.

- John F. Kennedy, Jr.

King's Presidential counterpart during the Civil Rights Struggle in the early 1960s, Kennedy is known to have had an affair with Marliyn Monroe in 1962. Still, Kennedy is presented as one of the most sympathetic Presidents for Civil Rights, is praised more for his handling of the Cuban Missile Crisis and forgiven since he was assasinated in November, 1963.

- Strom Thurmond

I have to include Thurmond, who had an illegitimate, biracial daugher named Essie Mae Washington-Williams when he was 22. If you have a chance, read Dan Rather's interview with Essie on 60 minutes. What's fascinating is that Thurmond was quite supportive of Washington - helping her through South Carolina State College and even visiting her on a few occasions. Of course, he could have been more supportive by actually raising her as her father and not visiting her every 10 years. And then he could have not been such an ardent supporter of racial segregation. But who am I to judge?

Anyway, my point is that history is full of famous affairs and whenever one comes up, it piques the interest of contemporary newspapers and casual historians. It's the equivalent of celebrity gossip, rooted with social impacts that require us to rethink previous assumptions about a person. I suppose we rethink our feelings towards current stars, but I hope those thoughts are more superficial than rethinking how Freud's affair forever changed our understand of pyschoanalysis. At its core, sex scandals always have been, and always will be, fascinating gossip. Whenever a person deviates from societal norms of fidelity, people want to know. There's something to be said about wanting to know what's taboo and the fallout that inevitably occurs from such actions.

For further famous sex scandals, see the Wikipedia page on it.