Fatal Lies

teacher how frequently the symptoms of hysterical patients represent sexual things. For this purpose they took him to the bedside of a female hysteric, whose attacks were an unmistakable imitation of the process of childbirth. But with a shake of his head he remarked, ‘Well, there's nothing sexual about childbirth.’ Quite right. Childbirth need not in every case be something improper.”

Liebermann was the only member of the audience who smiled.

“I see that you take offense at my joking about serious things,” Freud continued. “But it is not altogether a joke—for it is not easy to decide what is covered by the concept sexual.’ “

And so he went on, improvising with extraordinary fluency, exploring a range of subjects relating to human sexuality (many of which he chose to illustrate with clinical examples drawn from his own practice). Liebermann was particularly interested in a case of sexual jealousy.…

When the lecture ended, at a quarter to nine, Freud took some questions from the audience. They were not very searching, but the professor managed to answer them in such a way as to make the questioners appear more perceptive than they actually were. It was a display of good grace rarely encountered in academic circles.

Liebermann lingered as the auditorium emptied. He approached the lecturer's table. The professor shook Liebermann's hand, thanked him for coming, and remarked that he would not be going on to Konigstein's house to play taroc, as his good friend had caught a bad head cold. Moreover, as it was his custom to socialize on Saturday nights—and he was nothing if not a creature of habit—he wondered whether Liebermann would be interested in joining him for coffee and a slice of guglhupf at Cafe Landtmann. The young doctor— always eager to spend time with his mentor—accepted the honor readily.

They made their way to the Ringstrasse while talking somewhat superficially about the attendees. Two of the gentlemen, Freud believed, were general practitioners—but he had no idea as to the identity of the other two. It was truly astonishing, Liebermann reflected, how Freud's public lectures rarely attracted more than half a dozen people. The professor commented, as if responding telepathically to Liebermann's private thoughts, that resistance to psychoanalytic ideas merely confirmed their veracity.

A red and white tram rolled by, its interior lit by a row of electric lights. The passengers, staring out of the windows, seemed peculiarly careworn and cheerless.

Liebermann asked the professor some technical questions about the case material he had discussed in his talk—and, more specifically, about the patient he was treating who suffered from sexual jealousy.

“Yes,” said Freud. “Sane in every respect, other than an absolute conviction that when he leaves Vienna, his saintly wife enjoys assignations with his brother—a celebrated religious in their community. The man reminds me of Pozdnyshev in Tolstoy's The Kreutzer Sonata. Have you read it?”

“I have.”

“You will recall then how Pozdnyshev suspects that the musical evenings his wife enjoys with the violinist Trukhachevsky are merely an artful deceit. So it is with my patient, who has come to believe that when his brother and wife are supposedly praying together, they are in fact enjoying the forbidden pleasures of an illicit union.”

“In the end, Pozdnyshev kills his wife—does he not?”

“Indeed… Tolstoy understood that jealousy is the most dangerous of passions. The doctor who takes such a patient into his care can assuredly expect his nights to be much disturbed by fearful imaginings.”

The professor proceeded to make some distinctions between different forms of jealousy namely neurotic and pathological—the latter being more severe than the former. Then he suddenly seemed to lose confidence in his delineations.

“The problem is,” he continued, stroking his neatly trimmed beard, “that one cannot love without experiencing jealousy. It is one of the many common forms of unhappiness that we might ascribe to the human condition. In matters of the heart, the boundary that separates that which is normal from that which is abnormal all but dissolves. Possessed of this knowledge, the physician must be extremely wary with respect to what he identifies as an illness.”

“Surely,” Liebermann ventured, “in cases of sexual jealousy where there is insufficient evidence to substantiate an allegation of infidelity, we can reasonably describe the symptoms as delusional.”

Freud shrugged and stopped to light a cigar. He offered one to Liebermann, but the young doctor declined.

“I remember,” Freud said, “many years ago, when I was only recently engaged to be married…” He paused, sighed, and whispered almost incredulously, “A situation arose that caused me much mental turmoil.” The professor began walking again. He was looking straight ahead, but his gaze had lost some of its characteristic probing intensity.

“I once had a dear friend,” he continued. “Wahle was his name. He was an artist of considerable talent.… He had also been, for a long time, a brotherly friend of my beloved Martha—and, naturally, they corresponded. I should mention that Wahle was already engaged himself—in fact, to Martha's cousin. So… there was never any reason for…” He hesitated, drew on his cigar, and exhaled, uttering as he did so the word “suspicion.” He nodded grimly. “However, one day, I came across some of their letters, and detected in their content certain meanings.… I discussed my discovery with Schonberg, a mutual acquaintance, who confirmed my fears. He said that Wahle was behaving strangely, that he had burst into tears when he had heard of my engagement to Martha. Clearly, I could not allow this situation to continue—a sentiment that Schonberg appreciated. He subsequently organized a meeting in a cafe, where he hoped we would be able to resolve matters civilly.

“Unfortunately, the meeting did not go well. Wahle behaved like a madman. He threatened to shoot me and then himself if I did not make Martha happy. I thought it was some kind of joke. I actually laughed… and then he said that it was in his power to destroy my happiness. He could—and would—instruct Martha to end our engagement, and she would obey. It was an insane claim and I couldn't take it seriously. So he called for a pen and paper and began to write the letter there and then. Schonberg and I were both shocked—it contained the same inappropriately familiar terms of endearment that I had seen in his other letters. He referred to his ‘beloved Martha’ and his ‘undying love.’ I was outraged, and tore the letter to pieces. Wahle stormed out, and we followed him, trying to bring him to his senses, but he only broke down in tears. I seized his arm and— close to tears myself— escorted him home.”

Freud paused for a moment. A beggar, huddled in a doorway, extended his hand. The professor dug deep into his pocket and tossed a coin in the man's direction.

“But the next morning,” he continued, “my heart hardened. I felt that I had been weak. Wahle was now my enemy, and I should have been ruthless. He was clearly in love with Martha. I wrote to her, explaining this—but she would have none of it! She sprang to his defense. They were friends, nothing more, like brother and sister! Her refusal to condemn his behavior played on my mind. I began to think about Wahle's threat: perhaps he did have some hold over her. Perhaps he could make her give me up. I experienced an attack of appalling dread. It drove me quite frantic. I wandered the streets for hours, every night: thinking, thinking, thinking.… What had really passed between them? Why had she not taken my side—as she so obviously should have done? In the end, I could stand it no longer. I had to see her. I borrowed enough money to travel to Wandsbeck, and we met—for the sake of propriety—in secret. We talked and reached… an understanding.

“I returned to Vienna much calmer. But only a week later, that appalling dread returned. I was tormented by the slightest notion that Wahle might be—in any way—dear to her. Something took possession of my senses… something demonic. I gave Martha an ultimatum. I demanded that she renounce their friendship completely, and stated that if she failed to do this, I would… I would settle the affair with him—finally.”

“Finally? You intended to…” Liebermann dared not finish the sentence.

Freud shook his head.

“Thinking about it now, I'm not sure what I meant. These events were such a long time ago.” As though surfacing from a dream, Freud blinked and turned to look at Liebermann. His eyes seemed to contract—recovering their piercing vitality. “Fortunately, for all of us, Martha agreed. Wahle vanished from our lives, but the wound that he inflicted took many years to heal. So you see—even the most rational of men…”

It was an extraordinary confession, but not unprecedented. Liebermann had known the professor to disclose personal details of his life before: his openness was not so remarkable, given that his masterpiece The Interpretation of Dreams contained much that would ordinarily be described as autobiographical—and not all of it flattering, by any means. Freud had included in the section on somatic sources an account of one of his