Labyrinths: Emma Jung, Her Marriage to Carl and the Early Years of Psychoanalysis. Catrine Clay

appearances can be deceptive. Some time before the Jungs left their home town of Zürich for Vienna, Emma had considered delivering her husband an ultimatum: either change his ways or she would divorce him – a shocking and rare thing at the beginning of the twentieth century, and one utterly alien to the retiring character of Emma Jung. She felt lost in the labyrinth of her marriage to Carl, beset with problems. Life could not go on the way it was.

      By 1907 the Jungs had been married for four years and had two young daughters – Agathe, aged three, and Gretli, almost two – who were being cared for back in Zürich by the children’s maid, helped by Carl’s mother and his unmarried sister Trudi. Four years might not be long, but it was long enough for Emma to discover the extent and complexity of her situation, though not long enough to know what to do about it. The problem was twofold: Carl’s outward manner, so confident he could come across as arrogant, concealed a very different and infinitely more complicated interior, one which constantly eluded Emma, however hard she tried to understand it. The second problem was no easier to solve: Carl was always flirting with other women, and they with him, provoking in Emma emotions she had never even known she possessed: storms of jealousy and fury followed by terrible feelings of self-doubt and recrimination. On top of all this Carl was extremely ambitious, working day and night at the asylum like a man possessed, driven by a conviction that he had a special understanding of the insane, because in many ways he was so like them. One way or another, it left almost no time for family life. Emma would spend hour upon hour in the Jungs’ apartment on the second floor of the Burghölzli asylum waiting for her husband to return.

      There were further complicating factors. Emma came from a well-known family of wealthy industrialists, the Rauschenbachs of Schaffhausen, making her one of the richest heiresses in Switzerland. Carl on the other hand was the son of a poor pastor of the Swiss Protestant Reformed Church. In fact, he was in debt when he first met Emma to the tune of 3,000 Swiss francs, which at a time when a working man might earn thirty francs a week was a very large sum indeed. It was a humiliation for Carl, this poverty, because the Jung family was respected in his home town of Basel and most of them were not poor at all. But his father, for reasons best known to himself, chose to work in remote parishes which barely offered a living. So they were the poor relations and Carl hated it. On marrying Emma he inherited all his wife’s money and possessions, and became not only debt-free but a man of independent means in his own right, and able to support his impoverished mother and sister. Uncertain whether the young, ambitious Herr Doktor Jung was not just a plain old-fashioned fortune-hunter, Emma’s family allotted her an additional monthly allowance of her own. In the event of a divorce everything each partner brought to the marriage reverted to them – a useful tool when delivering an ultimatum.

      This is how things stood between the couple waiting for Herr Professor Freud in the foyer of the Grand Hotel in March 1907. One thing, however, was clear: Emma loved Carl fiercely and was prepared to fight to the bitter end to keep him. Carl, for his part, may or may not have married his wife for her money. But it certainly was not his only reason. The deeper reasons, true to his character, were infinitely more complicated.

      The Jungs’ spring break was a useful distraction, travelling to three countries over a period of three weeks, just the two of them, and staying at the very best hotels. Their tour would take them to Budapest, then Fiume and Abbazia in northern Italy, but their first stop was Vienna, where Carl had already made arrangements. ‘I shall be in Vienna next Saturday evening, and hope I may call upon you on Sunday morning at 10 o’clock,’ Carl had written to the Hochverehrter – highly esteemed – Professor Freud on 26 February. ‘My wife has relieved me of all obligations while I am in Vienna,’ he added, and ‘I shall take leave, before my departure, to let you know at what hotel I am staying, so that you could if necessary send word there. Most truly yours, Dr Jung.’

      Who knows what Freud made of Jung’s repeated use of the first-person pronoun, as though he were coming on his own, but he must have understood because when he arrived at the Grand Hotel that March morning, Freud was bearing some flowers for Frau Doktor Jung. As he presented them to her, with a formal bow, Emma saw a small dapper man with a neatly clipped moustache and beard, dressed in his winter best: a worsted overcoat in the English style; a suit, waistcoat, floppy bow tie, homburg hat, spats over boots, and a cane. His hair, inclined to be unruly, was combed down with his usual pomade supplied by the local barber he frequented every morning.

      Originally the Jungs were meant to visit over Easter when Professor Freud had time to spare, but this was not possible for Carl and Emma who always spent Easter with their children. This presented a problem for Freud, who worked from eight in the morning till eight at night, apart from a break for the midday meal followed by a walk round the district for some air and a visit to the cigar shop. Unlike Carl Jung, Freud had not married into money and had to earn a living to support his large and extended family. ‘But Sundays I am free, so I must ask you to arrange your visit to Vienna in such a way as to have a Sunday available for me,’ he had written to Jung on 21 February. ‘If possible I would like to introduce you to a small circle of followers on a Wednesday evening. I further assume you will be willing to forgo the theatre on the few evenings you will be spending in Vienna, and instead to dine with me and my family and spend the rest of the evening with me. I am looking forward to your acceptance and the announcement of your arrival.’ Forgo the theatre? Jung had absolutely no intention of going. He hated the theatre. That was what Ludwig Binswanger was there for, to chaperone and entertain Emma. He himself wanted to spend every available minute with the Herr Professor.

      As the four of them walked along, Freud smoking his third or fourth cigar of the day, the conversation remained on the formal level: the journey, the weather, their hotel accommodation – polite talk, just filling in. They must have made a comic sight – the two men who would become the two giants of psychoanalysis, walking side by side: Jung over six foot, Freud five foot seven, and Jung already talking his head off, loudly, as he always did.

      Berggasse may have been only a short walk from the Ringstrasse, but it was far enough to leave the grandeur of the Ring district behind and enter the more modest, cobbled streets surrounding Vienna University. And it was long enough for a small misunderstanding to occur, seemingly insignificant at the time, but in hindsight very significant indeed. Freud, trying to put the visitors at their ease, joked that he was happy to be receiving them as guests to his home, but warned that it was a very modest place and had little to offer, just his alte (old woman) – nothing much else. Emma was shocked. So was Carl. What a way to talk about your wife, the mother of your children! Swiss haute bourgeoisie as they were, Freud’s self-deprecating Jewish humour was completely lost on them. Emma, usually blessed with a healthy sense of fun, was puzzled.

      Frau Professor Freud was there to greet the guests from Zürich as they mounted the stone steps of 19 Berggasse, and then up the stairs to the apartment. Emma, shaking Martha Freud formally by the hand – ‘guten Tag, guten Tag’ – observed an older woman in a long-skirted, high-necked Sunday dress, stylish in its way, with a simple brooch at the neck, her dark hair pinned up neatly with combs. Behind her stood a younger woman, Martha’s unmarried younger sister Minna who lived with them – an interesting set-up which caused plenty of gossip and speculation over the years. Herr Professor Freud and his two women. Apparently Minna sometimes answered the telephone calling herself ‘Frau Professor’! Freud himself did not like the newfangled telephone and always left it to one of the women of the house to answer. In 1907 Sigmund Freud was fifty-one, Martha forty-six. They had been married for twenty-one years and had six children ranging from Mathilde twenty, Martin eighteen, Ernst sixteen, Oliver fifteen, Sophie fourteen, down to Anna, twelve. Freud called them his ‘rabble’ and his ‘rascals’ with affection and some pride.

      Martha, greeting Emma Jung, observed a formal, reticent young woman, dressed with an understated style, and only a few years older than her daughter Mathilde. She already knew about the Frau Doktor’s wealth. Everyone knew. But what she could not fail to notice was that Frau Doktor Jung did not act wealthy. As the two women exchanged greetings, Jung was shaking hands in the formal Swiss way. No fancy Viennese kissing of ladies’ hands for Carl.

      On special occasions such as this Martha would cook a chicken for the midday meal, though her husband was not keen. ‘Let