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Hysterical: Anna Freud's Story
Anna Freud was Sigmund Freud’s youngest daughter. She was devoted to him: his collaborator, companion, and nurse; as Coffey points out in her introduction, she “never stopped parroting [his] ideas.” Anna was also a lesbian, and while not "out" in the modern use of the term, she spent five decades in a relationship with another woman, Dorothy Burlingham, a woman she co-mothered children with.
If you know Freudian theory, you know Freud considered lesbianism a gateway to mental illness (and always the fault of the father). You might also know that due to what Freud considered an "inherently erotic relationship" between analyst and analysand, it was strictly verboten to engage in psychoanalysis with a family member. Despite this decree, Freud analyzed Anna during two distinct parts of her young adulthood.
How did Anna manage to live a full life and become a guiding force for analysts, educators, and humanitarians, all while devoting herself to her wary father as he aged and died? Hysterical is Anna Freud’s fictional autobiography; in it she tells her full story for the first time.
If you know Freudian theory, you know Freud considered lesbianism a gateway to mental illness (and always the fault of the father). You might also know that due to what Freud considered an "inherently erotic relationship" between analyst and analysand, it was strictly verboten to engage in psychoanalysis with a family member. Despite this decree, Freud analyzed Anna during two distinct parts of her young adulthood.
How did Anna manage to live a full life and become a guiding force for analysts, educators, and humanitarians, all while devoting herself to her wary father as he aged and died? Hysterical is Anna Freud’s fictional autobiography; in it she tells her full story for the first time.
366 pages, Paperback
First published May 13, 2014
155 people are currently reading
722 people want to read
About the author
Rebecca Coffey
12 books12 followersBy day Rebecca Coffey is a science journalist, contributing to Scientific American, Discover, and Vermont Public Radio. She also presents a weekly radio spot, Family Friendly Science, on the nationally syndicated show, Daybreak USA. By night she is a novelist and humorist. Hysterical: Anna Freud's Story is due out in May 2014 from She Writes Press. Nietzsche's Angel Food Cake: And Other "Recipes" for the Intellectually Famished was published in October 2013 by Beck & Branch.
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Displaying 1 - 30 of 55 reviews
June 29, 2015
I really enjoyed this story. It was quite different. Especially at the beginning of the book, I was going: Is this for real? I'm going to go with Jean P. Moore's "fact-checking" as she stated in her review that she did some! https://www.goodreads.com/review/show... But honestly, the beginning of the story was just weird. So apparently, the beginning of Anna Freud's life was just weird. But as the story progressed I was fascinated and moved. I loved how Anna found herself and her place in the world against the profound pushback of her father, the famous Sigmund Freud, and a world at war. By the time I got to the last page, I found the story very inspiring. I highly recommend this if you enjoy stories about women finding their authentic identities. Although it leaves dark clouds over the theories Freud and Jung developed, and the methods they used, overall it speaks to the worthiness of making some effort to comprehend one's internal life.
July 17, 2015
HYSTERICAL: ANNA FREUD’S STORY, by Rebecca Coffey, is an historical novel told from the perspective of Anna Freud. It is a memoir Anna writes on her deathbed, and in true Freudian fashion as Anna reflects back on her life—the choices she made, the actions which defined her, how she came to be who she was—much of her memoir centers on her childhood. And much of her childhood ruminations center on her relationship with her monstrously overshadowing father, Sigmund Freud.
In the Author’s Note of the book, Rebecca Coffey, a journalist by training, mentions that she did not set out to write a novel. When the various estates and Freudian strongholds kept Anna Freud’s personal letters and writings under lock and key, Coffey turned to fiction to fill in the blank spaces. This, I think, is an admirable approach—Anna’s is a voice that deserves to be heard. Anna was a lesbian, but her father’s work denounced her sexuality. At the same time, Anna Freud, of all of Freud’s children, was his clear intellectual heir and also his caretaker in his old age. They had a close professional and emotional relationship, but how did those theories about Anna’s “brokenness” affect her? Despite his warnings about the inherently erotic nature of the analytic relationship, Freud analyzed Anna, probably about her sexuality—what must that have done to their relationship? These are the questions Coffey sought to explore with her novel, and they are good ones. They are ripe for exploration. I was chomping at the bit to read this book.
This is a situation, ultimately, of unfulfilled promise. When Coffey allows Anna to delve into the questions above, it is only with glancing blows. The story behind the book—Coffey’s search for answers, the tired old Freudian vanguard circling the wagons and shutting her out, her turning to fiction to create answers for herself—is more intriguing than the book itself, which is a great pity.
For the book to work, Anna has to shine. As a narrator, for us as readers to carry with her, I feel the book could have gone one of two ways: she could have been blisteringly honest, terrifyingly honest about everything. There would have been anger, and evisceration, and confusion. A lot of emotion. A lot more emotion than she displays in the book as Coffey wrote it. Or, Anna could have been inherently unreliable—equivocating, hero-worshiping, lauding Sigmund in ways that betray to the reader that perhaps not all was what it seemed. Instead, we got an Anna who was removed and distant, smirking and gentle. It seemed it wasn’t her own story she was even telling.
The rhythm of the narrative was strange; so much focus on some episodes of her life and so little focus on others. This is, perhaps, an odd complaint to make here, but I would have preferred the book to be less psychoanalytically focused—I would have liked fewer exhaustive sessions of Anna detailing her weird dreams to her father and more scenes of her actively living her own life. I wanted to see and feel her actually fall in love with the women in her life and experience her grappling with what that meant—not in sessions with her father, but in her own mind and in her skin. Ultimately, given the tightness of the focus on the analysis sessions with Sigmund, and given the narrowing in on his homophobia, the book became more about Anna’s inability to save him from himself than about her thoughts or her life or her actions.
As a novel, the book suffered from a lack of characterization and flawed pacing. To succeed, Anna’s voice needed to be strong enough to carry the book, but Coffey never found it—Anna drifted into the background, and as in history, she was overshadowed once again by her larger-than-life father here. I applaud the intent of this work, but the execution left much to be desired for me.
In the Author’s Note of the book, Rebecca Coffey, a journalist by training, mentions that she did not set out to write a novel. When the various estates and Freudian strongholds kept Anna Freud’s personal letters and writings under lock and key, Coffey turned to fiction to fill in the blank spaces. This, I think, is an admirable approach—Anna’s is a voice that deserves to be heard. Anna was a lesbian, but her father’s work denounced her sexuality. At the same time, Anna Freud, of all of Freud’s children, was his clear intellectual heir and also his caretaker in his old age. They had a close professional and emotional relationship, but how did those theories about Anna’s “brokenness” affect her? Despite his warnings about the inherently erotic nature of the analytic relationship, Freud analyzed Anna, probably about her sexuality—what must that have done to their relationship? These are the questions Coffey sought to explore with her novel, and they are good ones. They are ripe for exploration. I was chomping at the bit to read this book.
This is a situation, ultimately, of unfulfilled promise. When Coffey allows Anna to delve into the questions above, it is only with glancing blows. The story behind the book—Coffey’s search for answers, the tired old Freudian vanguard circling the wagons and shutting her out, her turning to fiction to create answers for herself—is more intriguing than the book itself, which is a great pity.
For the book to work, Anna has to shine. As a narrator, for us as readers to carry with her, I feel the book could have gone one of two ways: she could have been blisteringly honest, terrifyingly honest about everything. There would have been anger, and evisceration, and confusion. A lot of emotion. A lot more emotion than she displays in the book as Coffey wrote it. Or, Anna could have been inherently unreliable—equivocating, hero-worshiping, lauding Sigmund in ways that betray to the reader that perhaps not all was what it seemed. Instead, we got an Anna who was removed and distant, smirking and gentle. It seemed it wasn’t her own story she was even telling.
The rhythm of the narrative was strange; so much focus on some episodes of her life and so little focus on others. This is, perhaps, an odd complaint to make here, but I would have preferred the book to be less psychoanalytically focused—I would have liked fewer exhaustive sessions of Anna detailing her weird dreams to her father and more scenes of her actively living her own life. I wanted to see and feel her actually fall in love with the women in her life and experience her grappling with what that meant—not in sessions with her father, but in her own mind and in her skin. Ultimately, given the tightness of the focus on the analysis sessions with Sigmund, and given the narrowing in on his homophobia, the book became more about Anna’s inability to save him from himself than about her thoughts or her life or her actions.
As a novel, the book suffered from a lack of characterization and flawed pacing. To succeed, Anna’s voice needed to be strong enough to carry the book, but Coffey never found it—Anna drifted into the background, and as in history, she was overshadowed once again by her larger-than-life father here. I applaud the intent of this work, but the execution left much to be desired for me.
March 8, 2015
I visited Freud's home in the Hampstead neighborhood in North London a number of years ago, and was taken by his daughter Anna's office. She would sit invisibly behind the inevitable couch where the person being psychoanalyzed would lie. There was a weaving loom in front of her chair (out of sight of the patient) so when the patient's story became boring, she could at least get some weaving done. I thought it was very practical, so like a woman.
The book doesn't mention the loom, but it does a pretty good job of recreating the claustrophobic and flawed household Freud created for his children. Anna appeared to suffer the brunt of it, as she was curious and smart and was apparently the child most interested in (and then damaged by) Freud's psychoanalytical theories.
The author notes in the foreword that there is a treasure trove of autobiographical documents from Anna Freud that she did not have access to. Perhaps that's why she had to write the book as a novel. Jung and Ernest Jones make what are probably historically correct appearances, as do Anna's lesbian lovers. One of the most fun things about the book is that it's laced with Jewish jokes--apparently Freud was a bit of a jokester.
It's my impression that Freudian analysis is now generally out of favor. Am I correct or not?
The book doesn't mention the loom, but it does a pretty good job of recreating the claustrophobic and flawed household Freud created for his children. Anna appeared to suffer the brunt of it, as she was curious and smart and was apparently the child most interested in (and then damaged by) Freud's psychoanalytical theories.
The author notes in the foreword that there is a treasure trove of autobiographical documents from Anna Freud that she did not have access to. Perhaps that's why she had to write the book as a novel. Jung and Ernest Jones make what are probably historically correct appearances, as do Anna's lesbian lovers. One of the most fun things about the book is that it's laced with Jewish jokes--apparently Freud was a bit of a jokester.
It's my impression that Freudian analysis is now generally out of favor. Am I correct or not?
May 13, 2018
It is no easy thing--to write a fictional autobiography--but that is what Rebecca Coffey does in Hysterical: Anna Freud's Story. From the beginning, the reader is drawn into the story and to the main character, whose voice is true and authentic. Every time I thought the events unfolding were too bizarre to be true, a quick check proved otherwise. And where Coffey's imagination made up for the lack of source material, the fictional account was in keeping with the historical record, creating what could have been. I finished this book with great sympathy for Anna Freud--and with admiration for what she accomplished in her life, under dire circumstances. Indeed, surviving her father proved to be her most difficult challenge. (And by the way, the jokes were great and adeptly placed.)
May 1, 2017
I don't know that I would have picked up this book if it hadn't been the pick for my book club. To be honest, I don't know if I am happy that I did or not. I had a hard time getting into the novel, until about the half way point when things started to pick-up a bit. What I mostly got from this book is that Freud was a real dick and based on some of the crazy-ass theories presented as his in this novel, I am not really sure how he took such a prominent place in psychological circles. All I can think is that there were two world wars during his lifetime, so people's tolerance for crazy was at an all time high. How else could little gems like the following been given any credence at all: "Women's failure to embrace their innate need to be sexually brutalized is the source of all of hysteria's mysterious symptoms."
While the book is about Anna, Freud's youngest daughter, in telling her story the author makes a point of delving into some of Freud's wilder theories and the impact they had on his family. This book is supposed to have been as true to history as possible for a fictionalized biography, so if half the stories told are true, then growing up in the Freud house was no cup of tea. It is interesting that the person who is the father of a field of psychological study that has helped many people to better understand themselves, seemed to have very little understanding of the negative impact he had in the lives of the people around him. Or perhaps he did and used psychoanalysis as a shield, blaming the people around him for responding to him in such a negative way. Transference is a bitch. At least, that appears to be the author's point of view. It is difficult to know whether the thoughts in Anna's head are her own or the author's attempt to reconcile Anna's lack of public acknowledgement of her father's special brand of crazy with her apparently strong personality. As a modern woman, it is hard to imagine sitting silently by while you father tells you that women have a strong desire to be raped and that only through penetration can a woman truly fulfill her feminine roll, but like I said, it was a crazy time. I guess I will take back what I said earlier, I am glad that I read this book, if for no other reason than that I will never blindly refer to Freud's theories as a positive contribution to humanity ever again...perhaps seminal would be a better word (ha, Freud would have loved that). Much like they did with his family, the negative effect of some of his theories still haunt this world and the women who inhabit it. The last thing we need is science backed misogyny, at least his is just a soft science.
While the book is about Anna, Freud's youngest daughter, in telling her story the author makes a point of delving into some of Freud's wilder theories and the impact they had on his family. This book is supposed to have been as true to history as possible for a fictionalized biography, so if half the stories told are true, then growing up in the Freud house was no cup of tea. It is interesting that the person who is the father of a field of psychological study that has helped many people to better understand themselves, seemed to have very little understanding of the negative impact he had in the lives of the people around him. Or perhaps he did and used psychoanalysis as a shield, blaming the people around him for responding to him in such a negative way. Transference is a bitch. At least, that appears to be the author's point of view. It is difficult to know whether the thoughts in Anna's head are her own or the author's attempt to reconcile Anna's lack of public acknowledgement of her father's special brand of crazy with her apparently strong personality. As a modern woman, it is hard to imagine sitting silently by while you father tells you that women have a strong desire to be raped and that only through penetration can a woman truly fulfill her feminine roll, but like I said, it was a crazy time. I guess I will take back what I said earlier, I am glad that I read this book, if for no other reason than that I will never blindly refer to Freud's theories as a positive contribution to humanity ever again...perhaps seminal would be a better word (ha, Freud would have loved that). Much like they did with his family, the negative effect of some of his theories still haunt this world and the women who inhabit it. The last thing we need is science backed misogyny, at least his is just a soft science.
September 1, 2015
Sigmund Freud, founder of psychoanalysis, was narcissistic, psychologically fragile, and abusive. Rebecca Coffey, in this tour-de-force novel of his youngest daughter, Anna, gives us a portrait that is a series of lacerations: evisceration of her almost-worshipful relationship with her father; denunciation and rejection by him for the embracing of her homosexuality (and thirty-year relationship with the heiress to the Tiffany fortune).
In his seminal "The Assault on Truth" (1984), the director of the Freudian Archives, Jeffrey Moussaieff Masson, claimed that Freud abandoned his theory of sexual abuse and incest because he feared rejection by the scientific community. Masson himself was severely ostracized by the psychoanalytic community and fired from the Archives for his claims. Coffey bravely goes even further in "Hysterical". Freud is rendered an almost unbelievably cruel and very sick man. In psychoanalyzing his own daughter (a professional taboo), Anna confesses after a session: “I accepted the bloody sundering of psychic muscle that ensued. I reclined submissively. I had become a real woman.”
In the end “Papa was as afraid of living as he was of dying.” Fortunately, in "Hysterical", Anna finds her own voice and is fearless in the face of both life and death. Spellbinding and remarkable, Coffey’s writing is also superbly crafted, especially the ending sentence for each chapter.
In his seminal "The Assault on Truth" (1984), the director of the Freudian Archives, Jeffrey Moussaieff Masson, claimed that Freud abandoned his theory of sexual abuse and incest because he feared rejection by the scientific community. Masson himself was severely ostracized by the psychoanalytic community and fired from the Archives for his claims. Coffey bravely goes even further in "Hysterical". Freud is rendered an almost unbelievably cruel and very sick man. In psychoanalyzing his own daughter (a professional taboo), Anna confesses after a session: “I accepted the bloody sundering of psychic muscle that ensued. I reclined submissively. I had become a real woman.”
In the end “Papa was as afraid of living as he was of dying.” Fortunately, in "Hysterical", Anna finds her own voice and is fearless in the face of both life and death. Spellbinding and remarkable, Coffey’s writing is also superbly crafted, especially the ending sentence for each chapter.
March 14, 2019
I’m sorry to say I’m giving up after 2 years of trying to finish! Read half in time for book club (my pick) but it couldn’t keep my attention despite being so interested in this family and this topic!
September 26, 2021
what amazingly weird people the Freud's were.
December 9, 2021
The one part of this story that I liked was seeing Anna figure out how to take some of her father's basic ideas and then add compassion, kindness, and humility in adapting them for working with children. If the book is even close to accurate, they were a highly dysfunctional family and Sigmund was an egotistical, misogynistic, manipulative man who humiliated and bullied his patients and always assumed that he knew them better than they knew themselves. Ann was likeable, but I didn't feel like I got to know her much beyond her sexual hangups and her Electra complex- which makes sense for a book about the Freuds, but made for a monotonous read. Interesting bit of history though.
February 5, 2019
It took me FOREVER to get through this book!! I started reading it in October and took many breaks throughout to read other things. There were some parts of it that I did enjoy (actually the last 100 pages or so flew by because I was actually interested in her coming out and defying her father, etc) but most of it was pretty monotonous. It also just furthered my opinion that Freud was a quack who came up with all these theories and was famous for them when really he was just as crazy as any of his patients.
If nothing else it reminded me of something I say almost every day. Being a woman is wild.
If nothing else it reminded me of something I say almost every day. Being a woman is wild.
January 13, 2016
Probably a passingly good account of a very unfortunate life, but very disconnected in its voice for an autobiography. That could be deliberate, coming from the perspective of an analyst. It is almost completely lacking in anything about Anna beyond the parts of her life involving her father. What must have been much more important, long-lasting relationships with her partner and others are barely sketched in, resulting in my low rating. If her life beyond her father had been recounted in as much detail and that with him it could have been a four star book.
I'd have to read more about Freud and his theories, but from the account given here he was a deeply troubled and troubling man who foisted his interpretation on mentally ill or weak people. Especially disturbing, and frankly obnoxious, is his presumption in analyzing his own daughter, particularly when he has decreed is verboten for analysts following his model to analyze family members! Over and over I wanted to reach in and shake him by the scruff of the neck, telling him everything he is obviously doing wrong and irreparably damaging people's psyches. Even more so, I want to pull Anna out of his manipulative little world to make her realize how he's messing with her.
Again, I need to look more into the non-fiction of Freud, his theories, and his practice, but if this book is at all based on the truth, as the account of research suggests it is, HOW did society hold to and believe such ridiculous and damaging principles about mental health for so long, even to today? I can't imagine how this kind of treatment could have helped anyone! It's making me realize why the history of "the shrink" may have had such a ridiculous and bad connotation.
The much lighter, shorter account of Anna's work as a child analyst shows a massively healthier approach focused on the needs and actions of the child rather than the direction and manipulation of the analyst. I could have given the book four stars if it devoted as much time to Anna's work as it did to her father's.
I'd have to read more about Freud and his theories, but from the account given here he was a deeply troubled and troubling man who foisted his interpretation on mentally ill or weak people. Especially disturbing, and frankly obnoxious, is his presumption in analyzing his own daughter, particularly when he has decreed is verboten for analysts following his model to analyze family members! Over and over I wanted to reach in and shake him by the scruff of the neck, telling him everything he is obviously doing wrong and irreparably damaging people's psyches. Even more so, I want to pull Anna out of his manipulative little world to make her realize how he's messing with her.
Again, I need to look more into the non-fiction of Freud, his theories, and his practice, but if this book is at all based on the truth, as the account of research suggests it is, HOW did society hold to and believe such ridiculous and damaging principles about mental health for so long, even to today? I can't imagine how this kind of treatment could have helped anyone! It's making me realize why the history of "the shrink" may have had such a ridiculous and bad connotation.
The much lighter, shorter account of Anna's work as a child analyst shows a massively healthier approach focused on the needs and actions of the child rather than the direction and manipulation of the analyst. I could have given the book four stars if it devoted as much time to Anna's work as it did to her father's.
July 6, 2015
This is a novel, but if Sigmund Freud was as batty as his fictional daughter describes him, it's amazing that he ever had any credibility--even before it became known that he was a cocaine addict. This book imagines him as a difficult and authoritarian father who probably hated women--except his wife's sister, who lived with the Freuds and likely never had penis envy because she had decades of access to his.
I don't know anything about the historical Freud, and it's difficult to get any information from his tightly guarded archives, but I'm going to try to see how much of this novel may be the truth about the Freud family's strange practices and Sigmund's particular furious hatred of lesbians.
I don't know anything about the historical Freud, and it's difficult to get any information from his tightly guarded archives, but I'm going to try to see how much of this novel may be the truth about the Freud family's strange practices and Sigmund's particular furious hatred of lesbians.
July 11, 2017
Not sure what Rebecca Coffey was trying to do with this... it was an interesting idea that never hung together with almost slapstick humour shoehorned in every now and again! It also made Freud seem far too nice when he was a bit of a monster.
December 2, 2015
this was an amazing read...it's funny, challenging, informative, shocking at times and moving.
November 29, 2014
A fictional autobiography done very well.
April 21, 2021
There is one trap that this novel falls into that’s common to its genre: the recitation of facts. As is clear from the biography, Rebecca Coffey did thorough research, and apparently Coffey originally planned to do a straight biography but, being denied access to Anna’s personal unpublished writings, had to resort to imagination to fill in the gaps. Considering that and the author’s background in journalism, it’s not surprising that the story devolves into rote fact-communicating narration. Perhaps Anna Freud would have written her memoir in that way. But perhaps Coffey should have put some fictional autobiographies on her reading list.
As a writer, I sometimes ask the question, how would I have written it? And if I were writing this book, I would have restructured the story so that we start with Anna’s analysis and then work backwards through her childhood, fantasies, and her relationship with her father and family. I would also have kept the focus on Anna, for often - especially in the beginning - the focus seems to be more on her father. Because it wasn’t until part 3, when we start focusing on Anna more, that I started to take a real interest in the story.
I would also have structured the story in such a way that centered Anna and her father’s relationship more squarely. For me, that was the heart of the story, with Anna’s homosexuality complicating matters, and the fact that they partook in an otherwise forbidden analysis raised interesting questions about ethics and the nature of their relationship. And though there seems to be a great story in her relationship with Dorothy, for me the real story ended with Chapter 31, and the rest is one long epilogue. To keep all the rest in, perhaps I would have featured her father more prominently (he sort of fades into the background until the family leaves for England) in these chapters. But on the other hand Anna and Dorothy’s story is rather separate - after all, they went on to be together for a few decades after Papa Freud’s death.
And as for the facts, I would have cut all the irrelevant facts that hardly add to character, plot, setting or theme. This is a novel. A novel is not read for facts, but for the story and characters in it.
And when the novel does get to the story, it is done quite well: the prose is breezy, insightful, suspenseful, even funny. Parts 3-5 were so easy and enjoyable to read. There are just some small logical inconsistencies, and a big inconsistency with Anna’s voice (as others have astutely pointed out).
So a better novel about Anna Freud could be written: one with a stronger voice, one that focuses on her relationship with her father, her life mostly without him, her work and relationship with Dorothy, or both. But this is... okay.
As a writer, I sometimes ask the question, how would I have written it? And if I were writing this book, I would have restructured the story so that we start with Anna’s analysis and then work backwards through her childhood, fantasies, and her relationship with her father and family. I would also have kept the focus on Anna, for often - especially in the beginning - the focus seems to be more on her father. Because it wasn’t until part 3, when we start focusing on Anna more, that I started to take a real interest in the story.
I would also have structured the story in such a way that centered Anna and her father’s relationship more squarely. For me, that was the heart of the story, with Anna’s homosexuality complicating matters, and the fact that they partook in an otherwise forbidden analysis raised interesting questions about ethics and the nature of their relationship. And though there seems to be a great story in her relationship with Dorothy, for me the real story ended with Chapter 31, and the rest is one long epilogue. To keep all the rest in, perhaps I would have featured her father more prominently (he sort of fades into the background until the family leaves for England) in these chapters. But on the other hand Anna and Dorothy’s story is rather separate - after all, they went on to be together for a few decades after Papa Freud’s death.
And as for the facts, I would have cut all the irrelevant facts that hardly add to character, plot, setting or theme. This is a novel. A novel is not read for facts, but for the story and characters in it.
And when the novel does get to the story, it is done quite well: the prose is breezy, insightful, suspenseful, even funny. Parts 3-5 were so easy and enjoyable to read. There are just some small logical inconsistencies, and a big inconsistency with Anna’s voice (as others have astutely pointed out).
So a better novel about Anna Freud could be written: one with a stronger voice, one that focuses on her relationship with her father, her life mostly without him, her work and relationship with Dorothy, or both. But this is... okay.
November 17, 2018
I've read a handful of historical fiction about real people that claimed to read like novels, but this was the first one to deliver. Hysterical is the fascinating cobbled together story of Anna Freud, the daughter of psychoanalyst Sigmund Freud, and very much reads smoothly and with great interest.
I have never been a fan of Freud's theories or body of works, but I found this examination of his daughter's life, her work, and her eventual loving relationship with another woman a truly fascinating one. It reads as though it is her own autobiography, although no such text actually exists. Usually historical fiction ends up being too thick and reliant on too much outside knowledge of the time frame for me, but I had absolutely no trouble reading this book in a matter of days.
With tight writing skills and a fascinating topic I never even considered before, Coffey has written a truly outstanding novel.
I have never been a fan of Freud's theories or body of works, but I found this examination of his daughter's life, her work, and her eventual loving relationship with another woman a truly fascinating one. It reads as though it is her own autobiography, although no such text actually exists. Usually historical fiction ends up being too thick and reliant on too much outside knowledge of the time frame for me, but I had absolutely no trouble reading this book in a matter of days.
With tight writing skills and a fascinating topic I never even considered before, Coffey has written a truly outstanding novel.
March 4, 2024
This was an amazing read about Anna Freud's life, from childhood to her death including the WWII years where she and her family went to England to stay safe. I've always wanted to read more about her and, when I saw this available at the library, I put it on hold right away. I really learned so much about what she had to go through in her endeavor to enter the psychoanalysis field. Having Sigmund Freud as a father was sometimes a stubbling block but also a very lucky opportunity. I encourage anyone interested in Anna Freud and the Freud Family to read or listen to this. Very informative indeed.
August 25, 2017
A novel written in the first person about the Freuds. Anna was a lesbian, and had to fight mightily to become herself, given her father and his unethical habit of analyzing his daughter. Without that analysis, she would not have become an analyst herself though, and she changed the way children are treated in this world with her work. Interesting book, and a harrowing ending when her family had to escape Nazi Germany. Again, without Freud's fame and powerful friends, they would all have died. Freud's four sisters did in fact die after the rest of the family escaped.
August 28, 2021
I love a good biography, and this was definitely a great one. Pieced together from the diary of Anna Freud, you get a full picture of life in the Freud household for Anna growing up and well into adulthood. Along with insights into how her famous father influenced her development, you are also regaled with stories of the Psychoanalytic Society, details of her siblings' lives, and the Nazi invasion of Austria. Finally, all of Anna's own contributions to the foundations of child psychology, as well as her establishment of the orphanage in England with Dorothy Burlingham during WWII.
May 14, 2022
Wow! Quite an eye opener!
Anna reveals things in their family that really questions Sigmund Freud's early theories. I feel anybody that is a staunch Freudian needs to read this book to realize he was wrong on many accounts.
I feel after reading what Anna and dorcy Burlingham did for children during the war, Anna was definitely A better psychoanalyst.
Anna reveals things in their family that really questions Sigmund Freud's early theories. I feel anybody that is a staunch Freudian needs to read this book to realize he was wrong on many accounts.
I feel after reading what Anna and dorcy Burlingham did for children during the war, Anna was definitely A better psychoanalyst.
This entire review has been hidden because of spoilers.
February 18, 2019
A funny, warm, engaging book, in which Anna is likeable and her love for and criticism of her father both come over clearly. The writing has some great turns of phrase and manages to subtly capture her process of growing up.
August 27, 2018
what a wild book
October 15, 2018
Had to stop in the middle. What the author was suggesting was simply too terrible even to imagine.
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June 19, 2019Abandoned! Did not like the book, the story, the style, nothing.
August 17, 2020
Interesting take on Anna Freud. A little bit of a slow starter.
November 2, 2020
I hated this book, off and on, while reading it. Or maybe it was the actual story I hated. Only “plumbing the depths” can say for sure which.
abandoned
January 13, 2021Not interested in this subject matter.
April 2, 2021
Loved the snippets of ironic, Jewish humor.
June 10, 2021
An interesting introduction to the Freud family.
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