In 1873, Sigmund Freud enrolled at the University of Vienna, but by his own admission he was “decidedly negligent” with his studies, passing his medical exams for his doctorate eight years later, in 1881. He was ensconced most of that time in the laboratory of physiologist Ernst Brücke, where he found “rest and full satisfaction,” as he put it, studying the nervous system. All of which suggested that he was set to embark on a career that would allow him to slowly climb the academic ladder.
That is, until one afternoon in April 1882, when Freud returned home from the laboratory and met Martha Bernays, an attractive, 21-year-old visitor from northern Germany. It was an encounter that radically altered his life’s trajectory.
