Autograph Psychological Analysis, Signed

Autograph note signed in the hand of the legendary psychologist, giving a short psychological analysis of a female patient. On the letterhead of fellow psychologist Dr. Paul Federn, a representative of Freud and the Vice-President of the Vienna Psychoanalytic Society. Nicely framed behind glass with a photograph of Freud and a translation from German to English, as follows: "Miss Kirschbaum, At the present time: Depressions - fits of fear, not eliminated even with the approach of marriage. 10/21/21  Freud." Some light wrinkling and toning visible to the autograph note, but overall in fine condition. Sight size 5.5 x 3 inches (14 x 7.3 cm), framed to an overall size of 15.5 x 21.5 inches. 

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." (17748)

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