Free Freud's Mistress by Karen Mack

out the voices of the pedestrians around them. Minna looked up as he pulled another cigar from his pocket. He lit it, thoughtfully puffing, while he watched an aimless group of students loitering in the park across the street.
    Her mind was reeling, but she was hesitant to say more. She leaned over self-consciously to fix her boot once again. It was now rubbing her ankle raw. She sat down on the nearby bench, trying to loosen the offending laces. He studied her as the afternoon light glowed softly on her hair.
    â€œWhat are you looking at?” she asked, glancing up.
    He held her gaze and smiled slightly.
    â€œI’m looking at you.”

7
    A few days later, when the children were busy with the governess, Minna decided to attend Sigmund’s lecture at the university. After all, he had invited her on the day she arrived, and although he hadn’t mentioned it since, she felt certain the offer had been sincere.
    The University of Vienna was just a fifteen-minute walk from the apartment, and she could make it if she hurried. Minna crossed the tree-lined Ringstrasse, rounding the corner at the Parliament building, and continuing through the elite Rathaus quarter, with its massive neo-Gothic public buildings. It was still unseasonably warm, and by the time she reached the university, her dress was damp with sweat and her hat slightly askew.
    She wandered around the campus for a few minutes, searching for the medical school. The imposing university buildings were monumental in scale and purposely intimidating, she felt. Particularly the giant, overblown Greek mythological sculptures planted here and there, glorifying this noble center of liberal learning. She approached a few students to ask directions before finally finding her way to the correct building. She struggled with the heavy door, gathered her courage, and climbed the staircase to the lecture hall on the second floor. By the time she got there, Freud had already begun.
    The room was filled to capacity, young men standing in the back, in the aisles, many of whom were wearing dark suits and yarmulkes. It was a well-known fact that the majority of medical students at this university were Jewish, as well as most of the doctors in Vienna. In fact, the emperor’s personal physician was in Freud’s B’nai B’rith group, as was the surgeon general of Austria.
    Freud stood at the podium, his voice echoing through the chamber. He looked relaxed, even a bit amused. He did not have a powerful voice, nor did he project a particularly commanding image. And yet as he talked, he had this strange, monumental pull over her. She noted that he was wittier, more confident now, and he delivered his words with compelling force, like an evangelical at his Sunday sermon. Even at this early point in the lecture, the students had put down their pens, mesmerized as he entertained them with anecdotes and jokes that would most likely be circulated in the cafés afterward. In her eyes, he was magnificent.
    â€œI’m reminded of a couple—I may have spoken of them before. Their marriage was tormented with a variety of conflicted feelings and misinterpreted signals . . . and, after weeks of talking to them, I thought we had something of a breakthrough.” He paused melodramatically. “But
then
the wife said to her husband, ‘When one of us dies, I’m going to Paris.’”
    The students erupted in appreciative laughter as Minna scoured the hall, searching for a place to sit.
    â€œBut I digress. As we were discussing last week, neurosis is a frequent consequence of an abnormal sexual life, and in fact, I’m finding sexual repression to be the key to understanding neurotic illness and human behavior in general.”
    Some titters from the audience. Now he began to discuss the crux of his report titled
Studies in Hysteria
, concerning sexual repression and its effect on people.
    â€œGentlemen, I’m going to provoke you to