Lucian Freud

Great dynasties of the world: The Freuds

Analyse this – the psychoanalyst's family tree by Ian Sansom

Ian Samson

Saturday 7 August 2010

I

n 1909 Sigmund Freud published a short essay titled Der Familienroman der Neurotiker. In James Strachey's famous English translation of the complete works of Freud, the essay is titled Family Romances. It begins:

"The liberation of an individual, as he grows up, from the authority of his parents is one of the most necessary, though one of the most painful, results brought about by the course of his development. It is quite essential that the liberation should occur and it may be presumed that it has been to some extent achieved by everyone who has reached a normal state. Indeed, the whole progress of society rests upon the opposition between successive generations. On the other hand, there is a class of neurotics whose condition is recognisably determined by their having failed in this task."

The Freud family seems to have been no more or less neurotic than anyone else.Freud was the eldest of eight children, a fact he felt not insignificant. "A man who has been the indisputable favourite of his mother", he is quoted as saying, "keeps for life the feeling of conqueror, that confidence of success which often induces success." Needless to say, Freud's own mother, Amalie, seems to have adored him. In his An Autobiographical Study (1925), Freud is brisk and businesslike in relating his family history. Of his family background, for example, he remarks merely: "My parents were Jews, and I have remained a Jew myself." In The Interpretation of Dreams, meanwhile, he is lavishly, complexly self-revealing – the book is a kind of living autopsy in which Freud dissects and discusses his own and others' dreams and fantasies.

In 1886 Freud married Martha Bernays, whose grandfather was Hamburg's chief rabbi. James Strachey describes the Freuds' domestic arrangements as "devoid of episode", though Peter Gay, in his biography Freud: A Life for Our Time (1988), offers plenty of interesting episodes to mull over. There is, for example, the unresolved matter of the exact nature of Freud's relationship with his sister-in-law, Minna Bernays. Carl Jung put about a rumour they were having an affair – but he was probably just mischief-making.

Sigmund Freud
Mathieu Laca

What we know for sure is that Freud and Martha had six children, and that only Anna, their youngest, became a psychoanalyst. One son, Oliver, became a civil engineer. Another, Ernst, became an architect. The Freuds' eldest son, Martin – of whom there were high hopes and expectations – ended up running a tobacconist in Bloomsbury. He also wrote a book, Glory Reflected: Sigmund Freud – Man and Father (1957), in which he said: "The son of a genius remains the son of a genius, and his chances of winning human approval of anything he may do hardly exist if he is to attempt to make any claim to a fame detached from that of his father."

Freud's grandchildren are perhaps better known than his children. Among the famous British Freuds – the sons of Ernst – there was Clement, the politician and broadcaster, and there is Lucian, the painter. Among their children are Matthew Freud, the PR guru married to Elisabeth Murdoch; Emma Freud, the broadcaster married to Richard Curtis; Esther, the novelist; and Bella, the fashion designer.

Freud’s Reflection With Two Children (Self Portrait)
Lucian Freud

And this is not to mention Clement and Lucian's older brother, Stephen, one of the many forgotten Freuds, who ran an ironmongery business just off Baker Street. In a rare interview in 2008, Stephen, proving himself to have been one of the sanest of the Freuds, told the Daily Telegraph: "Golf has played quite a large part in my life." Clement Freud boasted of never having read a word of his grandfather's work. And Lucian Freud once said: "Family is not important to me. It doesn't bother me in the slightest."

THE GUARDIAN