Freud's Patients: A Book of Lives

303 Pages·2021·5.635 MB·English

by  Mikkel Borch-Jacobsen

FFRREEUUDD’’ SS PPAATTIIEENNTTSS

FFRREEUUDD’’ SS PPAATTIIEENNTTSS
A BOOK OF LIVES
MIKKEL BORCH-JACOBSEN
Reaktion Books
Published by
Reaktion Books Ltd
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44–48 Wharf Road
London n1 7ux, uk
www.reaktionbooks.co.uk
Thirty-one of the 38 vignettes collected here were originally published
in French as Les Patients de Freud: Destins in 2011. Published by special
arrangement with Éditions Sciences Humaines in conjunction with
their duly appointed agent, 2 Seas Literary Agency
Translation by Andrew Brown
© Sciences Humaines 2011
English translation © Reaktion Books 2021
Additional material © Mikkel Borch-Jacobsen 2021
All rights reserved
No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval
system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means, electronic,
mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise, without the
prior permission of the publishers
Printed and bound in Great Britain
by TJ Books Ltd, Padstow, Cornwall
A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library
isbn 978 1 78914 455 0
CONTENTS
Preface 7
1 Bertha Pappenheim (1859–1936) 13
2 Ernst Fleischl von Marxow (1846–1891) 22
3 Mathilde Schleicher (1862–1890) 31
4 Anna von Lieben (1847–1900) 34
5 Elise Gomperz (1848–1929) 41
6 Franziska von Wertheimstein (1844–1907) 49
7 Fanny Moser (1848–1925) 56
8 Martha Bernays (1861–1951) 62
9 Pauline Silberstein (1871–1891) 72
10 Adele Jeiteles (1871–1970) 76
11 Ilona Weiss (1867–1944) 79
12 Aurelia Kronich (1875–1929) 83
13 Emma Eckstein (1865–1924) 88
14 Olga Hönig (1877–1961) 96
15 Wilhelm von Griendl (1861–1898) 101
16 Baroness Marie von Ferstel (1868–1960) 105
17 Margit Kremzir (c. 1870–1900) 109
18 Ida Bauer (1882–1945) 110
19 Anna von Vest (1861–1935) 119
20 Bruno Walter (1876–1962) 124
21 Herbert Graf (1903–1973) 127
22 Alois Jeitteles (1867–1907) 133
23 Ernst Lanzer (1878–1914) 136
24 Elfriede Hirschfeld (1873–1938) 139
25 Kurt Rie (1875–1908) 145
26 Albert Hirst (1887–1974) 148
27 Baron Victor von Dirsztay (1884–1935) 153
28 Sergius Pankejeff (1887–1979) 162
29 Bruno Veneziani (1890–1952) 175
30 Elma Pálos (1887–1970) 192
31 Loe Kann (1882–1944) 201
32 Karl Meyreder (1856–1935) 207
33 Margarethe Csonka (1900–1999) 212
34 Anna Freud (1895–1982) 218
35 Horace Frink (1883–1936) 227
36 Monroe Meyer (1892–1939) 248
37 Scofield Thayer (1889–1982) 256
38 Carl Liebmann (c. 1900–1969) 271
sources 281
acknowledgements 301
photo acknowledgements 302
PREFACE
We all know the characters described by Freud in his
case studies: ‘Emmy von N.’, ‘Elisabeth von R.’, ‘Dora’,
‘Little Hans’, the ‘Rat Man’, the ‘Wolf Man’, the ‘Young
Homosexual Woman’. But do we know the real people behind
these illustrious pseudonyms – respectively, Fanny Moser, Ilona
Weiss, Ida Bauer, Herbert Graf, Ernst Lanzer, Sergius Pankejeff,
Margarethe Csonka? More generally, do we know all those many
patients on whom Freud never wrote anything, or at least not
directly: Pauline Silberstein (who committed suicide by throw-
ing herself from the top of her therapist’s building), Olga Hönig
(the mother of ‘Little Hans’), Bruno Veneziani (the novelist Italo
Svevo’s brother-in-law), Elfriede Hirschfeld, Albert Hirst, the
architect Karl Mayreder, Baron Victor von Dirsztay, the psychotic
Carl Liebmann and so many others? Do we know that Bruno
Walter, the great conductor, was one of Freud’s patients, as was
Adele Jeiteles, the mother of Arthur Koestler? And that Freud
also hypnotized his own wife, Martha Bernays, before analysing
his daughter Anna?
In what follows I have tried to reconstruct the sometimes
comical, most often tragic and always captivating stories of these
patients who have long been nameless and faceless: in total, 38
sketchy and necessarily incomplete portraits, drawn from the docu-
ments available today and told without prejudging revelations
that, in the future, might emerge from those which are still closed
to researchers within the Freud Collection at the Library of
Congress in Washington, dc. Thirty-eight portraits, and that is
it: I have selected only those of Freud’s patients on whom we
already have enough information to justify a biographical note,
7
FREUD'S PATIENTS
however brief. Those about whom we know little apart from their
names or initials have been excluded – for now. This collection
therefore does not claim to be exhaustive, merely representative.
As partial as it is, this sample should at least allow the reader to
get an idea of F reud’s actual clinical practice, over and above the
fabulous narratives he himself drew from it.
I have limited myself to Freud’s patients, without including the
many people who lay down on Freud’s couch mainly to train as
analysts (such as Anna Guggenbühl or Clarence Oberndorf, for
example) or out of simple intellectual curiosity (such as Alix and
James Strachey, or Arthur Tansley). This survey includes only
people who came to see Freud for symptoms from which they
sought to be cured or existential difficulties from which they could
not extricate themselves. It is for this reason that I have included
Anna Freud, Horace Frink and Monroe Meyer, even if it is clear
that in their cases the analysis was also a training one. All three
of them were, first and foremost, in need of care, and it is as ther-
apy that their treatments should be evaluated, as in the case of
the other patients cited here.
Finally, I have refrained as far as possible from taking into
account Freud’s interpretations, which are what make his case
histories so fascinating and interesting. By comparison, the stories
the reader will find here are prosaic and quotidian. No theory, no
commentary: I have kept to the surface of the facts, documents
and testimonies available, without speculating on the motivations,
conscious or unconscious, of any of the people involved. Those
who seek in these stories a confirmation of Freud’s stories may
therefore be disappointed, as they will not find ‘their’ Freud here.
On the other hand, they will find another Freud, the Freud of his
patients and their entourage. I am not sure whether we can recon-
cile these two Freuds, or these two ways of telling stories. I apologize
in advance to those whom this history-based approach will con-
fuse or shock. The reader will find the sources on which I have
relied at the end of the volume. Some are primary, as historians say,
others are secondary.
An earlier incarnation of this book came out in French ten
years ago and has been significantly augmented and updated, based
on new material that has emerged in the meantime. Errors and
omissions have been rectified (at least those that were detected), a
8
Preface
number of biographical vignettes have been fleshed out with fresh
information, and seven newly identified patients have been added
to the 31 that featured in the French edition. These additions do
not, however, change much the overall conclusion that can be
drawn from these informal follow-up studies: with a few ambiguous
exceptions, such as the treatments of Ernst Lanzer, Bruno Walter
and Albert Hirst, Freud’s cures were largely ineffectual, when they
were not downright destructive.
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