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It may not be widely known that Martha Bernays Freud, the wife of Professor Sigmund Freud and, moreover, the epitome of the nineteenth-century Hausfrau, looked after her husband so devotedly that she even squeezed toothpaste onto his toothbrush every single day and night (Berthelsen, 1987; Roazen, 1993, 1995). The Frau Professor did so, not only as an expression of the subservient position of women at that point in history but, also, in order to save Professor Freud precious time, which he required to treat his patients and to write his many books and papers.
This domestic detail, which many contemporary feminists might find rather shocking, raises a number of very important questions about the lives of great men and, indeed, great women. One wonders whether, in order to become hugely successful, our innovators and geniuses truly require a fleet of servants to slather toothpaste onto their brushes so that they might thus shield themselves from such annoying nuisances. Can these people not manage on their own? What role do spouses play in the lives of hugely productive and creative individuals? And do we, as mental health practitioners, have anything to learn from the domestic lives of our distinguished forefathers and foremothers?
Hitherto, few psychotherapists or biographers have, to the best of my knowledge, written much about the marriages of the great founders of our profession. My own study of both the first and second wives of Dr Donald Winnicott offers a small insight into the unconscious factors which propelled the noted British psychoanalyst towards each of these women and, also, examines the impact of Winnicott's lengthy personal analyses with James Strachey and Joan Riviere upon his marital relationships. Furthermore, I consider the role of Winnicott's wives in the development of his creative work (Kahr, 2019). But few colleagues have published comparable studies of other pioneers.
Fortunately, due to the efforts of the writer and historian Catrine Clay, we