Freud's paternity crises

Abstract

This article reexamines the interpretation of the significance of the Aliquis slip and related materials in terms of a family crisis in 1900 involving Freud, Anna Freud Bernays and their youngest sister Paula. It contends that Ernest Jones and Anna Freud later hid this story from history, largely for family reasons. It supports this contention by drawing on Ernest Jones and Anna Freud's archived letters, Anna Freud Bernays' memoirs, the complete Freud-Fliess letters and other historical sources and compares them to The Origins of Psychoanalysis and to Ernest Jones' biography of Freud. It shows how events during the crisis manifested themselves in Freud's On Dreams, the Aliquis slip, and the banking error story. It rejects Peter Swales' hypotheses about Freud and Minna Bernays being part of the Aliquis slip, but accepts Didier Anzieu's idea that Minna Bernays was the subject of the banking error story. It shows that the motive for the historical repression of the story began with Freud, but was over determined and included guilt and pain that developed when Paula and other sisters got caught up in the Nazi takeover of Austria.

Keywords: historical research; identity; sexuality.