| Chapter Three |
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Young Manhood and Early Maturity: 1882-1900 WE NOW TAKE UP what will prove for our topic to be the most important years in Freud’s life: his late 20s, his 30s, and his early 40s. These were his adult years before his major ideas were published and before he became a public figure. At the end of this period he was engaged in founding psychoanalysis, but throughout this time Freud was an ambitious but unknown physician-scientist struggling to make a name. Engagement Letters: Easter, Pentecost, and Other Christian Themes Freud and Martha Bernays (pictured together in Figure 3-1) became engaged in June 1882 and were married when Freud was 30 and his wife 25, in September 1886.1 Schur comments in his biography on this four-year engagement (a period that ended when Freud was in a financial position to support a family): “To the dismay of the lovers, but to the delight of future biographers and critics, Freud and his beloved were separated most of the time. Freud wrote to her practically every day.”2 These letters tell us much about Freud’s attitude toward religion when, in his late 20s, he was preoccupied with his fiancée and with furthering his scientific research career. Eissler calls this time of Freud’s engagement a “Sturm und Drang” period.3 The immediately preceding years at the University found Freud “vacillating in his interests, doubtful about his place in the world and mildly hypochondriacal,”4 though under no great psychological tension. But Freud during his engagement is well described by Eissler as “passionately ambitious, acutely rivalrous, and |