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Tribute to Freud: Writing on the Wall and Advent
Bringing together Writing on the Wall composed some ten years after H.D.'s stay in Vienna, and Advent, a journal she kept at the time of her analysis there. Tribute to Freud offers a rare glimpse into the consulting room of the father of psychoanalysis. It may also be the most intimate of H.D.'s works.
Compelled by historical as well as personal crises, the poet worked with Freud during 1933-34. The streets of Vienna were littered with tokens dropped like confetti on the city, stating "Hitler gives work." "Hitler gives bread." Having endured World War I, she was now gathering her resources to face the second cataclysm she knew was approaching. In analysis, Hilda Doolittle explored her Pennsylvania childhood, her relationship with Ezra Pound (inventory of her nom de plume H.D.), Havelock Ellis, D.H. Lawrence, her ex-husband Richard Aldington, and subsequent companion Winifred Ellerman ("Bryher"), as well as her own creative processes.
Freud, regarding H.D. as a student as well as a patient, wads hardly the detached presence one might imagine. Revealed here in the poet's words and in his own letters, which comprise an appendix, is the considerate friend, the charming Viennese gentleman—art collector, dog lover, wit—and the pioneer, always revising his ideas and possessed of an insight that could be terrifying in its force.
Compelled by historical as well as personal crises, the poet worked with Freud during 1933-34. The streets of Vienna were littered with tokens dropped like confetti on the city, stating "Hitler gives work." "Hitler gives bread." Having endured World War I, she was now gathering her resources to face the second cataclysm she knew was approaching. In analysis, Hilda Doolittle explored her Pennsylvania childhood, her relationship with Ezra Pound (inventory of her nom de plume H.D.), Havelock Ellis, D.H. Lawrence, her ex-husband Richard Aldington, and subsequent companion Winifred Ellerman ("Bryher"), as well as her own creative processes.
Freud, regarding H.D. as a student as well as a patient, wads hardly the detached presence one might imagine. Revealed here in the poet's words and in his own letters, which comprise an appendix, is the considerate friend, the charming Viennese gentleman—art collector, dog lover, wit—and the pioneer, always revising his ideas and possessed of an insight that could be terrifying in its force.
208 pages, Paperback
First published January 1, 1956
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459 people want to read
About the author
H.D.
128 books331 followersAn innovative modernist American writer, Hilda Doolittle (1886–1961) wrote under her initials in a career that stretched from 1909 to 1961. H.D., most well known for her lyric and epic poetry, also wrote novels, memoirs, short stories, essays, reviews, a children’s book, and translations. An American woman who lived her adult life abroad, H.D. was engaged in the formalist experimentation that preoccupied much of her generation. A range of thematic concerns resonates through her writing: the role of the poet, the civilian representation of war, material and mythologized ancient cultures, the role of national and colonial identity, lesbian and queer sexuality, and religion and spirituality.
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Displaying 1 - 30 of 38 reviews
February 14, 2017
Fascinating, I would think particularly for any of you interested both in Freud and the Modernists.
“The Professor… said he wanted me to feel at home here. The house in some indescribable way depends on father-mother. At the point of integration or regeneration, there is no conflict over rival loyalties. The Professor’s surroundings and interests seem to derive from my mother rather than from my father, and yet to say the ‘transference’ is to Freud as mother does not altogether satisfy me. He had said, ‘And – I must tell you (you were frank with me and I will be frank with you), I do not like to be the mother in transference – it always surprises and shocks me a little. I feel so very masculine; I asked him if others had what he called this mother-transference on him. He said ironically and I thought a little wistfully, ‘O, very many.'”
and
"“The tone of his voice, the singing quality that so subtly permeated the texture of the spoken word, made that spoken word live in another dimension, or take another colour as if he had dipped the grey web of conventionally woven thought, and with it, conventionally spoken thought, into a vat of his own brewing – or held a strip of that thought, ripped from the monotonous faded and outworn texture of the language itself, into the bubbling cauldron of his own mind in order to draw it forth dyed blue or scarlet, a new colour to the old grey mesh, a scrap of thought, even a cast-off rag, that would become hereafter a pennant, a standard, a sign again, to indicate a direction or, fluttering aloft on a pole, to lead an army…”
“The Professor… said he wanted me to feel at home here. The house in some indescribable way depends on father-mother. At the point of integration or regeneration, there is no conflict over rival loyalties. The Professor’s surroundings and interests seem to derive from my mother rather than from my father, and yet to say the ‘transference’ is to Freud as mother does not altogether satisfy me. He had said, ‘And – I must tell you (you were frank with me and I will be frank with you), I do not like to be the mother in transference – it always surprises and shocks me a little. I feel so very masculine; I asked him if others had what he called this mother-transference on him. He said ironically and I thought a little wistfully, ‘O, very many.'”
and
"“The tone of his voice, the singing quality that so subtly permeated the texture of the spoken word, made that spoken word live in another dimension, or take another colour as if he had dipped the grey web of conventionally woven thought, and with it, conventionally spoken thought, into a vat of his own brewing – or held a strip of that thought, ripped from the monotonous faded and outworn texture of the language itself, into the bubbling cauldron of his own mind in order to draw it forth dyed blue or scarlet, a new colour to the old grey mesh, a scrap of thought, even a cast-off rag, that would become hereafter a pennant, a standard, a sign again, to indicate a direction or, fluttering aloft on a pole, to lead an army…”
October 17, 2020
This book is very irregular. I very much liked the first part, which is what H.D wrote many years after she had been a "student" or analysed by Freud. It is a sort of fragmented memoir which is as much about Freud, or her relationship with him during that time, as it is about herself. I became curious of reading it since I am more interested in her writing, but maybe I am not such a Freudian as to have read this. The second part is diary she kept during that time, and it´s mostly dreams and moments she has with him.
Here is one of my favourite parts:
Stop Thief! (...) He was nonchalantly unlocking vaults and caves, taking down the barriers that generations had carefully set up against their hidden motives, their secret ambitions, their suppressed desires. Stop Thief! Admit, however, that what he offered as treasure, this revelation that he seemed to value, was poor stuff, thrash indeed, ideas that a ragpicker would pass over in disdain, old junk stored in the attic, put away, forgotten, not even worth the trouble of cutting up for firewood, cumbersome at that, difficult to move, and moreover if you started to move one unwieldily cumbersome idea, you might dislodge the whole cart load of junk; it had been there such a long time, it was almost part of the wall and the attic ceiling of the house of life, Stop Thief!
Here is one of my favourite parts:
Stop Thief! (...) He was nonchalantly unlocking vaults and caves, taking down the barriers that generations had carefully set up against their hidden motives, their secret ambitions, their suppressed desires. Stop Thief! Admit, however, that what he offered as treasure, this revelation that he seemed to value, was poor stuff, thrash indeed, ideas that a ragpicker would pass over in disdain, old junk stored in the attic, put away, forgotten, not even worth the trouble of cutting up for firewood, cumbersome at that, difficult to move, and moreover if you started to move one unwieldily cumbersome idea, you might dislodge the whole cart load of junk; it had been there such a long time, it was almost part of the wall and the attic ceiling of the house of life, Stop Thief!
January 17, 2018
This was really mesmerizing to read. The author's regard for Freud almost made me like him, which is a difficult feat.
dnf
December 11, 2022DNF'd on: December 11th, 2022
DNF'd at: 13%
I'm finally free from tedious modernist literature.
DNF'd at: 13%
I'm finally free from tedious modernist literature.
April 25, 2019
Livro precioso por guardar um testemunho de como Freud trabalhava. A escritora e poetisa norte-americana Hilda Doolittle (1886-1961) narra momentos de sua análise com Freud em 1933 e 1934. Este livro apresenta dois textos de Hilda, além da correspondência trocada com Freud e com Bryher. A Zahar ainda nos brinda com o prefácio de Roudinesco apresentando o contexto histórico e a biográfico da autora. No primeiro texto, Hilda reconstroi em estilo onírico o material que levava para análise com Freud. As lembranças de infância e a série de imagens que viu projetadas na parede durante sua estada em 1920 na ilha de Corfu. Por isso o título, Escrito na parede. O que este primeiro texto tem de único é a riqueza de associações com mitos e símbolos. Ela descreve em detalhes como ela e como Freud iam lendo essas imagens, inclusive dos sonhos durante a análise. Ela se refere a lembranças entre o sonho e a visão, lembranças que retêm detalhes vívidos, quase acontecimentos fora do tempo. No segundo texto, Advento, ela escreve em estilo de um diário, com datas, e relata como eram as sessões de análise e como se sentia. Podemos comparar esse segundo texto de Hilda ao diário de Smiley Blanton, Diário de minha análise com Freud, publicado pela Editora Nacional em 1975. Este norte-americano, pedagogo e psicanalista em formação, fez um diário de sua análise de controle e análise didática com Freud, também em mais de um período, entre 1929 e 1937. Com base nesse livro, o psicanalista brasileiro Antonio Quinet escreveu e produziu a peça de teatro, Hilda e Freud (2016, Giostri editora) que assisti em Caxias do Sul em 6 de abril de 2019. Fiquei encantada com o roteiro, uma forma de transmitir a psicanálise.
August 31, 2007
I love short chapters. H.D. writes in poetic vignettes that hopscotch through time and space, mythology and memory, without ever coming across as overly-precious or needlessly experimental. Her portrait of Freud is less about eulogizing him, than it is about pinning her memories down like butterflies under glass, inspecting their markings with humble reverence.
"It was not that he conjured up the past and invoked the future. It was a present that was in the past or a past that was in the future."
"It was not that he conjured up the past and invoked the future. It was a present that was in the past or a past that was in the future."
May 22, 2015
I find h.d.'s repetitive free associations (her fascination with Freud's fascination with Egyptology, rivers, 'the Professor', 'Mother', the aimless drift of existence) tedious, but this is a long book, and H.D. is a poet, so there are descriptions of Freud's practice in visual terms that you can't find anywhere else.
May 18, 2024
I did not enjoy reading this.
Sure, the idea of psychoanalysis and Freud's work in general would've been interesting to read about, but H.D. is not. I just didn't really care about her and her subconscious, especially since I don't know near enough about Greek mythology and literature to fully understand what she was on about.
And then there's her connection with Freud. Despite referring to him as a grandfather-like person, her descriptions of him seem to have a rather romantic origin: it almost sounds like she's in love with him. Whereas I'm normally a sucker for romance, this wasn't it. Additionally, Freud told her multiple times to stop taking notes about or prior to the sessions and H.D. just kept doing it. Honestly, how many times do you need to be told 'no'?
I'm not saying this isn't a good book, I just really had to pull myself through while reading this and I mostly rate books based on whether I enjoy them or not.
Sure, the idea of psychoanalysis and Freud's work in general would've been interesting to read about, but H.D. is not. I just didn't really care about her and her subconscious, especially since I don't know near enough about Greek mythology and literature to fully understand what she was on about.
And then there's her connection with Freud. Despite referring to him as a grandfather-like person, her descriptions of him seem to have a rather romantic origin: it almost sounds like she's in love with him. Whereas I'm normally a sucker for romance, this wasn't it. Additionally, Freud told her multiple times to stop taking notes about or prior to the sessions and H.D. just kept doing it. Honestly, how many times do you need to be told 'no'?
I'm not saying this isn't a good book, I just really had to pull myself through while reading this and I mostly rate books based on whether I enjoy them or not.
September 17, 2025
He intentado varias veces que me guste H.D., pero creo que no puede ser. Este libro es, básicamente, un diario de su transferencia erótica. Intenta buscar imágenes poderosas, pero a mí no me llega. Tenía muchísimas ganas de leer este libro, no sé si quizás no ha sido el momento o quizás no llegará nunca. No la he soportado demasiado a ella.
December 13, 2022
I hope my professors know that blood, sweat, and tears went into reading the thirteen books, six short stories of varying length, and two essays on war assigned to me this semester. I read almost all of them but at WHAT COST?????
Edit (Dec 13 post final exam): a girl can only read and remember so much before she implodes but this girl just walked out of the exam room singing the Doxology so I suspect all shall be well
Edit (Dec 13 post final exam): a girl can only read and remember so much before she implodes but this girl just walked out of the exam room singing the Doxology so I suspect all shall be well
June 25, 2009
I keep trying to like H.D. Despite itself, Barbara Guest's biography casts her as an egocentric bourgeoise and drama queen...but at least that had lots of sensational details, like when she peed on Havelock Ellis. This book has all of the self-obsession and none of the sensation of Herself Defined.
About half of the book is devoted to fragmentary accounts of childhood memories and boring anecdotes; the other half details H.D.'s two brief periods of analysis with Freud, but there is not really much to it. She spends a lot of time buying him the right kind of flowers and obsessing over his collection of antiquities, but not much is revealed about the analytic process.
Maybe it's best to read the poems and to let the biographical detail fall away, but that is difficult to do when her life is so well documented by herself and others.
About half of the book is devoted to fragmentary accounts of childhood memories and boring anecdotes; the other half details H.D.'s two brief periods of analysis with Freud, but there is not really much to it. She spends a lot of time buying him the right kind of flowers and obsessing over his collection of antiquities, but not much is revealed about the analytic process.
Maybe it's best to read the poems and to let the biographical detail fall away, but that is difficult to do when her life is so well documented by herself and others.
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December 21, 2023Honestly a fascinating read. See inside someone’s head a little (Freud) by seeing through someone else’s a lot (H.D.). Oh, and the rise of Hitler in the background underscores the whole of it.
October 5, 2012
H.D. became Freud’s patient just about the time he was forced to flee Vienna for London. At 77, historical immortality assured, he must have been intimidating company. Ushered into his august presence, H.D. spends more time considering the collection of objects, the pictures on the wall, the very couch in the consulting room than she does him. On one hand, this may testify to her essentially Imagist imagination; but even more, to her habit of treating her whole life as if it bore occult messages, was subject to interpretation, like a dream. “I looked at the things in his room before I looked at him; for I knew the things in his room were symbols of Eternity and contained him…” (101-2)
H.D. apparently found the lines between waking life, memory, creative imagination and sleep imagery so porous as to seem sometimes nonexistent. Considering a childhood memory she muses “Did I make it all up? Did I dream it? And if I dreamt it, did I dream it forty years ago, or did I dream it last night?” (128) Such a perspective allows her a satisfying poetic prose of short thematic chapters, evocative slices rather than stodgy narrative. Two documents are in fact collected in the volume, the primary one retrospective, and the second dated entries of a contemporary journal. The relation between the two is quite like that between dream and waking, both texts going over much the same material. But the journal entries are often as imaginatively charged as the reworked passages; H.D. never lets up her mythologizing. Such procedures and attitudes strike me as more characteristic of modern Jungians than Freudians. In fact there is much in the poet’s psychic methodology reminiscent of Freud’s student turned adversary. For instance, it’s almost comic to imagine her bringing such concerns up, but “he dismissed my suggestion of some connection with the old mysteries, magic or second sight.” (173) Freud’s usual response to such provocations would be, “Well, you’re a poet, after all.” Making allowances, the two seemed to have been able to work together as something like equals, and a glorious result is this warm and lively book.
It’s my understanding H.D. sought analysis for insight into her bisexuality, but I noticed no overt mention of this theme—lingering Victorian repression?
H.D. apparently found the lines between waking life, memory, creative imagination and sleep imagery so porous as to seem sometimes nonexistent. Considering a childhood memory she muses “Did I make it all up? Did I dream it? And if I dreamt it, did I dream it forty years ago, or did I dream it last night?” (128) Such a perspective allows her a satisfying poetic prose of short thematic chapters, evocative slices rather than stodgy narrative. Two documents are in fact collected in the volume, the primary one retrospective, and the second dated entries of a contemporary journal. The relation between the two is quite like that between dream and waking, both texts going over much the same material. But the journal entries are often as imaginatively charged as the reworked passages; H.D. never lets up her mythologizing. Such procedures and attitudes strike me as more characteristic of modern Jungians than Freudians. In fact there is much in the poet’s psychic methodology reminiscent of Freud’s student turned adversary. For instance, it’s almost comic to imagine her bringing such concerns up, but “he dismissed my suggestion of some connection with the old mysteries, magic or second sight.” (173) Freud’s usual response to such provocations would be, “Well, you’re a poet, after all.” Making allowances, the two seemed to have been able to work together as something like equals, and a glorious result is this warm and lively book.
It’s my understanding H.D. sought analysis for insight into her bisexuality, but I noticed no overt mention of this theme—lingering Victorian repression?
November 16, 2011
I read this book in college. In fact, I wrote an essay on it. The most fascinating aspect of it was that HD was an analysand of Freud's. At one point in her therapy (according to her)she told Freud that being bisexual was "natural and normal" for her. He said in response - "It might be natural, but it's certainly not normal."
OK. That about sums it up.
OK. That about sums it up.
April 5, 2014
Loved this book. Loved discovering HD as a poet and loved the portrait of Freud.
September 15, 2015
You don't have to care about Freud even a little to love this book. While it takes an unconventional approach to writing, HD is easy to follow and flawlessly blends poetry and myth into her prose.
December 14, 2017
An unusual perspective.
September 11, 2024
She was just a happy customer writing a nice review on yelp 🥹
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August 7, 2025I picked this up because I was beguiled by descriptions of H.D.'s poetry and have a general interest in the history of psychoanalysis. I should’ve just read her poetry
I’ll say this: I found it hard to get past her relentless insistence on her own exceptionality. Preoccupations with class distinction and cultural refinement, repeated claims to be the best interpreter of Freud’s inner life (as his analysand, no less - make of that what you will), long forays into dream recitations... I found it tiresome.
H.D. casts herself not just as a patient, but as Freud’s girlboss redeemer. In doing so, he occupies a strange dual role: both a towering, nearly superhuman figure who belongs to History (not even to his own progeny, she notes), and someone so legible that his psyche can be read by her alone. That seems at odds to me.
Just as H.D.’s reading of Freud reveals more about herself than about him, my reading of H.D. probably says more about me than it does about her. I’m certain many readers find real beauty and insight here - I just didn’t this go around, except for some very vivid and horrifying descriptions of the war. I look forward to reading her poetry one day, bet I’ll like it more
I’ll say this: I found it hard to get past her relentless insistence on her own exceptionality. Preoccupations with class distinction and cultural refinement, repeated claims to be the best interpreter of Freud’s inner life (as his analysand, no less - make of that what you will), long forays into dream recitations... I found it tiresome.
H.D. casts herself not just as a patient, but as Freud’s girlboss redeemer. In doing so, he occupies a strange dual role: both a towering, nearly superhuman figure who belongs to History (not even to his own progeny, she notes), and someone so legible that his psyche can be read by her alone. That seems at odds to me.
Just as H.D.’s reading of Freud reveals more about herself than about him, my reading of H.D. probably says more about me than it does about her. I’m certain many readers find real beauty and insight here - I just didn’t this go around, except for some very vivid and horrifying descriptions of the war. I look forward to reading her poetry one day, bet I’ll like it more
February 15, 2020
“But it was a near-miss… even literally… and last night, here in London, there were familiar siren-shrieks, the alerts, each followed by its even more ear-piercing and soul-shattering ‘all-clear,’ which coming as a sort of aftermath or after-birth of the actual terror is the more devastating. Released from the threat of actual danger, we have time to think about it. And the ‘alerts’ and the ‘all-clears’ are punctuated by sound of near and far explosions, at three in the morning, after seven and at lesser intervals… the war is not yet over. […] It was the very love of humanity that caused the Professor to stand guardian at the gate. Belief in the soul’s arrival, in a life after-death, wrote the Professor, was the last and greatest fantasy, the gigantic wish-fulfillment that had built up, through the ages, the elaborate and detailed picture of an afterlife. He may even have believed this. If so, it was proof again of Centurion courage” (Tribute to Freud 103).
July 3, 2022
"He is Faust, surely. We retreat from the so-called sciences and go backward or go forward into alchemy. He said, I was impatient with him. He was turning a heavy seal-ring on his finger. I said that I could not lose him, I had had his books before I met him and have them again when I left Vienna. There is a formula for Time that has not yet been computed."
A marvellous reflection on the doctor-patient relationship and loving friendship between H.D. and Freud. Though I initially found myself questioning how it could be tribute to Freud, as one initially learns a great deal more about the patient but it soon turns into seemingly endless praise for the doctor. H.D. developed a significant attachment to him, which sometimes makes her responses read rather childlike when she doesn't feel she gets enough of him. I quite enjoy her poetry and enjoyed discovering this new side of her. This work also humanized Freud for me, painted a picture of the man behind the big name.
A marvellous reflection on the doctor-patient relationship and loving friendship between H.D. and Freud. Though I initially found myself questioning how it could be tribute to Freud, as one initially learns a great deal more about the patient but it soon turns into seemingly endless praise for the doctor. H.D. developed a significant attachment to him, which sometimes makes her responses read rather childlike when she doesn't feel she gets enough of him. I quite enjoy her poetry and enjoyed discovering this new side of her. This work also humanized Freud for me, painted a picture of the man behind the big name.
May 6, 2021
It's a fascinating book, given that it depicts the picture of psychoanalysis in the patient's view. The author Hilda Doolittle, a poet and a dreamer, is also a patient of Freud. It is beautifully written in a way similar to 'stream of consciousness', yet given the context, more exactly alike to 'stream of unconsciousness'.
The FOREWORD of the book by Merrill Moore is quite a mystery, yet engaging.
'TRUTH is stranger than fiction. This book is strange in the way that truth is when it is complicated and delicately told.'
The FOREWORD of the book by Merrill Moore is quite a mystery, yet engaging.
'TRUTH is stranger than fiction. This book is strange in the way that truth is when it is complicated and delicately told.'
June 2, 2022
This was very easy to read and provided an enjoyable insight into both Freud's and H.D.'s lives. I found it interesting to compare the tribute and diary sections and see how H.D. experienced things, and then wrote about them quite differently afterwards. However, as much as I enjoyed my time with this, I doubt this book will stay with me for long and I don't think I'll read it again anytime soon. It just wasn't captivating enough for that.
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December 27, 2020Read this for comps but actually really liked it, especially the first part that was more H.D. writing about her childhood. "There are various ways of trying to escape the inevitable. You can go round and round in circles like the ants under that log that Eric pried up for us. Or your psyche, your soul, can curl up and sleep like those white slugs."
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February 20, 2023freud being a dog person adds up just a liiiittle too well.
February 4, 2024
dnf-ed. i only had to read the first 111 pages for class but they were weird so i didn’t feel like finishing it. i hate freud.
November 5, 2025
Pure and utter waffle
February 24, 2024
she loved her dude freud
October 1, 2007
H.D. can be a little annoying. If one knew her in real life, she might drive a person to distraction. She comes across as someone who's self-absosrbed and addicted to talking through free association, whether on Freud's couch or not. I tried to be open-minded, however, and I was amply rewarded. H.D. herself was generous with Freud during her analysis with him. Despite his homophobic assumptions, she drew him out, encouraging him to reflect more rationally and less arrogantly about issues of sexuality. Through her writings, we get a more complex picture of Freud than the stereotypical polemic one often gets at the present time--more complex but also more compassionate, especially regarding his courage in the face of Nazi atrocities.
September 26, 2007
On Freud she says:
"He is midwife to the soul. He is himself the soul. Thought of him bashes across my forehead, like a death-head moth; he is not the sphinx but the sphinx-moth, the death-head moth."
And her own conflicts on the paranormal:
"Are we psychic coral-polyps? Do we build one upon one another? Did I (sub-aqueous) in the Scilly Isles, put out a feeler? Did I die in my polyp manifestation and will I leave a polyp skeleton of coral to blend with this entire myriad-minded chaplet or entire coral island? My psychic experiences were sub-aqueous."
"He is midwife to the soul. He is himself the soul. Thought of him bashes across my forehead, like a death-head moth; he is not the sphinx but the sphinx-moth, the death-head moth."
And her own conflicts on the paranormal:
"Are we psychic coral-polyps? Do we build one upon one another? Did I (sub-aqueous) in the Scilly Isles, put out a feeler? Did I die in my polyp manifestation and will I leave a polyp skeleton of coral to blend with this entire myriad-minded chaplet or entire coral island? My psychic experiences were sub-aqueous."
Displaying 1 - 30 of 38 reviews