Behavior: A Freudian Affair

Marie Bonaparte—Napoleon's great-grandniece—was once asked by Sigmund Freud: "What does a woman want?" During 53 years of marriage, Freud's wife Martha, a plain and gracious woman who scarcely bothered to understand his psychoanalytic theories, neither supplied nor demanded an answer. Now it appears Freud may have known all along, not as the pioneer of a revolutionary new approach to the human psyche, but as a man.

According to his anointed biographer, Ernest Jones, Freud was "quite peculiarly monogamous." The truth, says Psychologist John M. Billinsky, 59, contradicts that judgment: during his marriage, Freud...