Changes in familial relations have influenced historical scholarship. The family is now seen more in terms of relationships that have to be activated to be meaningful. This study first looks at general features of the European nineteenth-century bourgeois family and its context, in particular the dramatic fall in the marital birth rate. Sigmund Freud's family is then taken as a case study. Turning attention from the usual psychoanalytic focus, it is possible to tease out those relationships in which Freud was actually embedded, particularly with his siblings and siblings-in-law. The consequences of neglecting these features are highlighted.