Four Unknown Freud Anecdotes

Brett Kahr

American Imago, Volume 67, Number 2, Summer 2010, pp. 301-312 (Article)

Published by The Johns Hopkins University Press DOI: 10.1353/aim.2010.0006

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Brett Kahr

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Letter from London Four Unknown Freud Anecdotes

In psychoanalysis details are often of supreme importance for conveying understanding and conviction. J. C. Flgel, Psychoanalysis: Its Status and Promise (1930)

The British journal Psychoanalysis and History recently published a brief communication written by the late Dr. Lydia Marinelli (2009), the distinguished Austrian Freud scholar, about the actual tweed cap that Sigmund Freud wore during his flight from the Nazis. Marinelli reported that, after Freuds death, Anna Freud donated this item from her fathers wardrobe to the Sigmund Freud Museum in Vienna, where it remained until 1977, when an American visitor stole the priceless headgear. Extraordinarily, some years later, the thief in question actually posted the cap back to the Berggasse, full of contrition, perhaps having had some psychoanalysis in the meanwhile! Marinellis little pice doccasion, though charming and evocative, also serves as a potent reminder that, for those of us interested in the life of the founder of psychoanalysis, no biographical detail seems too insignificant. In fact, we greatly enjoy reading stories about Freuds cap, fascinated with every single aspect of his life. Perhaps a genius deserves such detailed attention. Perhaps his life remains so inspirational that we owe it to Freud and to posterity to capture every piece of minutiae. Perhaps our preoccupation with Freud represents no more than a sublimation of our primordial wish to know the bodies of our archaic caretakers, mummy and daddy. Whatever our motivation for researching Freud minutiae however useful these vignettes may or may not bethey do continue to delight those of us who work within the psychoanalytic domain. So naturally, when the late Professor Margaret
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Brenman-Gibson, a distinguished psychoanalyst from the Austen Riggs Center in Stockbridge, Massachusetts, told me that the late Professor Erik Erikson had told her an unpublished story about Freud, I listened attentively, and then I wrote it down in a notebook so that I would remember it accurately. Similarly, when I met a woman at a social gathering who told me that back in the 1930s, her unclea sex offenderhad travelled to Vienna for treatment with Freud, I also listened carefully, and jotted down the story, in spite of the lack of more detail. And when one of my former students, the late Mrs. Hilde Schoenfeld, invited me to tea with her nonagenarian aunt, Frau Olga Rosenberg, whose husband had once sold Freud a carpet, I accepted the kind offer to meet her with eagerness. And then, when I discovered a book written by the American socialite, Miss Elsa Maxwell, which mentions a meeting with Freuda meeting not otherwise known to Freud historians I became slightly excited, and thought that colleagues might wish to read this memoir for themselves. More dogged historians than I may perhaps still manage to locate some voluble centenarians who had intimate relationships with Freud and his circle; and if so, we await the accounts of these meetings with interest. Meanwhile, I have four very marginal anecdotes to share, and I do so unapologetically, safe in the knowledge that fellow Freudophiles are likely to enjoy these as well, but also because each vignette, however slight, conveys something about the character of Freuda character that continues to inform us and often serves as a model of wisdom and guidance. Sigmund Freud and the Sickly Child During the latter months of 1985, I had the opportunity to hear a lovely story about Sigmund Freud from Professor Margaret Brenman-Gibson, who had heard this story from her great mentor and friend, Professor Erik Erikson. Many Freud stories become repeated so often, and written about so incessantly, that one often discovers multiple renderings in a variety of printed sources; but I have not heard this particular story spoken elsewhere, or seen it published in the literature.

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Although one can so very easily fetishize every single vignette about Freud, and hasten into print, I regard this anecdote, especially, as very heart-warming and instructive; and I hope that it will provide some stimulation to readers with an interest in the history of psychoanalysis. Erikson of course knew Freud somewhat, as he and his wife Joan Mowat Serson Erikson lived in Vienna while Erik underwent an analysis with Anna Freud, and Joan herself had an experience of psychoanalysis with Dr. Ludwig Jekels. Therefore, Erikson would have heard a great many tales about Freud and his patients at first-hand. Apparently, Freud had told Erikson this memorable episode from his clinical practice; and it seems to have exerted such an impact on the youthful Erikson that he still found himself speaking about it many decades later. Apparently, a certain female patient had arrived at Freuds consulting room for her session. As usual, she lay down upon the couch, and she began to free associate. On this occasion however, the analysand seemed quite distressed, and she told Freud that she had left her small child at home with a fever, and in consequence, found herself worrying about the childs health. As a physician, Freud shared the patients concern, and admonished her by asking, Well, what are you doing here, then?or words to that effect. He then sent the patient home so that she could resume her duties as a mother. Professor Erikson communicated this story as an expression of Freuds unique compassion and humanity, which placed the needs of an ill child before the practice of psychoanalysis. One could readily use this Freud story as a starting point in clinical seminars on psychotherapeutic technique. When I first heard the story, I, too, shared Eriksons joy in Freuds lovely, caring qualities. However, upon further reflection, one wonders whether Freud had acted too precipitously by sending the patient away. After all, although the lady in question may have appreciated Freuds expression of concern for her child, she may also have felt that Freud had abandoned her, by placing the childs needs ahead of her own. Similarly, Freud may have underestimated the way in which the female patient had used an image of her own ill child as a means of communicating more readily something about the ill, child-like parts of her own personality.

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Furthermore, for all we know, the woman may have felt quite persecuted by her own child, and would have welcomed the opportunity for her psychoanalytic session with Sigmund Freud. It may be that she might also have felt infantilized, or, indeed shamed, by Freuds sending her away, perhaps implying that she could not care for her own offspring, or that she had engaged in a neglectful activity by daring to come to her session. After all, the patient may have had a husband, or a maid, or a nanny, or any number of other adults on hand who might have watched over the child while the mother spent an hour in Freuds office. Of course, with no knowledge of the patients history or character structure, or of any of the collateral details of the material, one can only speculate about the merits or demerits of this particular Freud vignette. But I hope that this brief, and otherwise unremembered, moment from Freuds clinical practice can serve as a stimulus for further discussion about matters of technique. Sigmund Freud and the Case of the Pedophile During the last twenty years or so, numerous authors have written quite critically about Freud and the whole question of child sexual abuse. Jeffrey Masson (1984), in particular, has spearheaded a vanguard of critical Freud scholars who claim that Freud had turned his back on the abused children of Vienna, abandoning his seduction theory of the neuroses in favour of an ostensibly more outlandish theory regarding the fantasmatic, oedipal origins of the neuroses. But as I have indicated elsewhere (Kahr 1991; 1999), Freud actually maintained a much greater interest in the realities of child sexual abuse and traumatization than his critics wish to credit him with (e.g., Freud 1896a; 1896b; 1905; 1917; 1931; 1940). As early as 1907, Freud wrote to Karl Abraham that, although a part of the sexual traumas reported by patients are or may be phantasies, other reports of traumas are nevertheless very frequent genuine ones, though establishing the distinction between these two categories is not easy (Falzeder 2002, 2). A few years later, in a 1913 letter to his Swiss colleague,

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Pfarrer Oskar Pfister, Freud mentioned, I have myself analysed and cured several cases of real incest (of the most severe kind) (Meng and Freud 1963, 59). Although we know that Freud continued to believe in the reality of child sexual abuse throughout his long career, we also know that he struggled in discriminating which cases of abuse could be documented and which ones might be an artifact of the patients fantasies. It remains less well known that during World War I Freud did supervise the treatment of a pedophile who underwent analysis with Freuds younger colleague Theodor Reik, thus suggesting that Freud knew about the practice of pedophilia only too well (Natterson 1966). But we know that Freud not only supervised a case of pedophilia treated by a disciple, but that he also had direct experience of working with a pedophile himself, although he seems never to have published an account of the psychoanalysis. On February 19, 1995, I had the opportunity to speak to an English woman whom I first met, quite by happenstance, at a social gathering in London. When I told her my profession, she became quite enthused, and she mentioned that her uncle had undergone analysis with Freud in Vienna in the 1930s. She related that her uncle, a convicted pedophile, seems to have appeared before an enlightened judge who told the man that he could either go to prison or else go to Vienna for an analysis with Professor Freud. The pedophile chose the latter option, and he did indeed have an experience of treatment by Freud. I quizzed my interlocutor thoroughly, and although to the best of our knowledge no written documentation of her late uncles trip to Vienna survives, this woman spoke at great length about the family history and about the uncles favorable experience with Freud. In the absence of archival data, one does not know how much store to place in the recollections of the niece of one of Freuds patients, treated more than half a century previously, but my encounter with the niece deserves to be chronicled as yet one more suggestion that Freud did indeed acknowledge the realities of child abuse even after the so-called abandonment of the seduction theory, in spite of what his critics might sometimes have us believe.

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Four Unknown Freud Anecdotes Sigmund Freud and the Carpet Merchant

In 1992, I had the privilege of meeting Mrs. Hilde Schoenfeld, an elderly woman who had decided to train as a psychotherapist late in life. We first became acquainted shortly after she had begun her clinical studies, and I had the pleasure of serving first as her tutor and lecturer and then later as her clinical supervisor. Hilde stood out among her intake of candidates, not only because of her advanced years but most particularly because of her magnificent smile, which lit up the entire room. A refugee from Berlin, Mrs. Schoenfeld had fled from Nazi Germany on the Kindertransport train roughly half a century earlier, and she established a rich family life for herself in England. After a full professional career as a teacher, Hilde sought to extend her learning by undertaking a psychotherapy training program. Although of retirement age, Hilde chose to continue her personal development by enrolling in our course, very much to her credit. After teaching a psychohistory seminar to Hilde and her colleagues, I soon became a regular instructor, and I taught Hildes group on many occasions, especially workshops on the psychoses and other forms of severe psychopathology. While the horrors of child abuse and the ravages of mental illness caused many of Hildes colleagues to wince, she embraced the course material with sensitivity and enthusiasm, and she contributed both helpfully and extensively to our classroom deliberations. As I often peppered my lectures with German psychoanalytic terms, Hilde could spot at once that we shared a similar cultural background, and she guessed correctly from my surname, and from my pronunciation, that my family had come from Vienna. The German-Austrian connection solidified a bond between us, and she enjoyed reminiscing to me about life in Berlin in the 1930s. In the final year of her training, Hilde came to me for clinical supervision, and she proved to be a most responsive, eager, and committed supervisee; and I took great pleasure in helping her to prepare her final case history, which she submit-

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ted successfully, qualifying as a psychoanalytic psychotherapist in 1996. I recently had the opportunity to reread Hildes case study, and this brought back a flood of fond memories of our supervisory work together, and most particularly of Hildes tremendous compassion for her patient, as well as her dedication to her work. I also recall the guilt that I used to feel that I have no lift in the office building in which I work. Although visitors need climb only two flights of not very steep stairs in order to reach my consulting room, Hilde, probably nearing seventy years of age at the time, used to enter my office puffing and panting. Nonetheless, she wanted to make the journey, and I know that she felt immense pride at qualifying, at a time when other aging people devote themselves exclusively to retirement and grandparenthood. Before her death in 2002, Hilde treated me to a most special experience at her warm and gracious home in North London. For some time, she had promised to introduce me to her nonagenarian friend, Frau Olga Rosenberg, a very elderly Viennese refugee who had become a guardian angel to Hilde for much of her life. Hilde used to call her Tante Oli (Auntie Oli). Hilde particularly wanted me to speak with Frau Rosenberg, not only because of my Viennese heritage but also because Frau Rosenbergs late husband Sndor Rosenberg, a carpet merchant in Vienna during the 1930s, had once met Sigmund Freud. Hilde organised the most splendid and wickedly calorific Berlin high tea, at which I met Frau Rosenberg and also Hildes very beautiful daughter Stephanie Schoenfeld, a talented actress. Tante Oli reminisced enchantingly about her late husbands brief, but nonetheless memorable, encounter with Professor Freud, which, I believe, merits capturing in print. The Rosenbergs owned a carpet shop in Vienna before World War Two. One day, Freuds youngest daughter Anna entered in search of a present for her father. Never renowned for her sartorial splendour, Anna Freud looked quite shabby, dressed rather like a peasant, and Tante Oli thought she must be a beggar in search of some loose coins! Frau Rosenberg almost gave her the money in the beggars bowl that Viennese tradespeople used to keep in their shops for precisely

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that purpose. Before long, the poorly clad Frulein Freud introduced herself as the daughter of the esteemed founder of psychoanalysis, and then she purchased an Oriental carpet as a gift for her father. Delighted to have sold one of his carpets to Viennas most esteemed family, Herr Rosenberg delivered the carpet personally to Freuds home on the Berggasse, where he had the opportunity to meet Professor Freud himself. Evidently a most charismatic man, Rosenberg regaled Freud with a joke, and the Professor responded with great appreciation, describing Herr Rosenbergs pleasantry as ein schner Witz. Although this little vignette hardly breaks new ground in our understanding of Sigmund Freud, I hope that it illustrates something essential about Hilde Schoenfeld, namely, her appreciation for history and biography, her respect for scholarship, her prosocial desire to link people together, and her wish to be helpful. She brought all of these qualities to bear on her important work as a telephone counselor with abused children at ChildLine and in her labors as a private practitioner of psychotherapy. Hilde never expected to have a long career in mental health, with few thoughts of writing books or serving on committees. She entered our field for her own personal growth. As one of my elderly students at another training institution once said to me, I am doing this course because I have to. It is the only way I can feel of value to myself and to others. I hope that Hilde Schoenfeld will serve as a model for other women and men of advanced years who can still make important contributions to the psychotherapeutic community. Sigmund Freud and the Socialite Today, the name of Elsa Maxwell will be known only to the very elderly, or to those familiar with American social history during the early and middle years of the twentieth century. But in her heyday, Elsa Maxwell would have required no introduction. A successful songwriter, a newspaper columnist, a compulsive socialite, a sometime film star, and above all the consummate hostess who entertained everyone of renown,

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Elsa Maxwell hobnobbed with fellow songwriters Irving Berlin, Nol Coward, and George Gershwin. Cole Porter, her great friend and colleague, immortalized her in several of his own compositions, such as Tomorrow from his 1938 musical Leave it to Me, Im Throwing a Ball Tonight from his 1940 musical Panama Hattie, and Farming from his 1941 musical Lets Face It. She cavorted with writers such as Ernest Hemingway, Aldous Huxley, Somerset Maugham, and George Bernard Shaw, and she lounged with actors such as John Barrymore, Fanny Brice, Charlie Chaplin, Gary Cooper, Greta Garbo, and Rita Hayworth. In fact, Miss Maxwell bore the responsibility for introducing Rita Hayworth to Aly Khan, shortly after the screen goddesss marriage to Orson Welles. She also met Salvador Dal, Albert Einstein, Dwight Eisenhower, and Adolf Hitler. Maxwell had a great penchant for cross-dressing in mens clothing, impersonating, inter alia, Aristide Briand, Benjamin Franklin, and Herbert Hoover. Apparently, Miss Maxwell also harbored a deep, sexual passion for the opera diva Maria Callas, whom she befriended with ardor (Galatopoulos 1998). Elsa Maxwell knew everyone, and clearly had a deep-seated need to ensure that everyone would know her, however slightly. Unsurprisingly, Maxwells list of trophy encounters would not be complete without a consultation in Vienna with Professor Sigmund Freud. In her autobiography, Miss Maxwell wrote, Ive been told a psychiatrist could have a field day with me, but Im inclined to doubt it. My analysis would be completed in one quick session because I know, almost to the minute, the two incidents that freed me of the complications that clutter up the lives of most peoplemoney and sex (1954, 18). She then explained, I never had a sexual experience, nor did I ever want one, and added, I saw so much unhappiness in the marriages of friends that I was content to have chosen music and laughter as substitutes for husbands and lovers (19). In this context, Miss Maxwell then summarised her visit to the founder of psychoanalysis in one short paragraph. According to Elsa Maxwell, At least one authority gave me a passing grade in emotional development. In 1931, I met the great Sigmund Freud in Vienna. He must have been amused by my talk, for he engaged me in conversation for fully a half

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hour. Freud asked me about my background. When I told him, he nodded and murmured: A healthy woman who will never suffer from neuroses . . . I didnt know then what neuroses were (1954, 20). As if to confirm the diagnosis, Miss Maxwell included a photograph of Freud in her book with the following caption: Freud. He told me I would never suffer (between 18283). Elsa Maxwells name does not appear in Freuds Krzeste Chronik (1992)his list of visitors and key eventsfor 1931, nor indeed, during any other year. Freud did however record many other events for 1931, such as his x-ray from a Dr. Presser; his medical consultation with Professor Dr. med. Hans Pichler; a surgical procedure in the Auersperg Sanatorium; his wife Martha Freuds flu; his son Oliver Freuds fortieth birthday; his evenings with Siegfried Bernfeld and Sndor Rad; the deaths of Mathilde Breuer and Arthur Schnitzler; his session with the sculptor Oscar Nemon; the announcement of the translations of his works into Japanese and Spanish; the seventieth birthday of his wife; as well as his own seventy-fifth birthday, inter alia. Perhaps the half-hour with Elsa Maxwell did not merit a mention. Indeed, I have never come across the name of Elsa Maxwell in the Freud literature. In view of the circles in which Maxwell traveled, and in view of her remarkable persistence of character, I have no reason to doubt the authenticity of this half-hour encounter. But perhaps unsurprisingly, because of the relative obscurity of Maxwells memoir, this account has escaped the attentions of Freud scholars. On the basis of such a short vignette, one cannot draw any conclusions from Maxwells report, though students of Freuds personality will wonder, of course, whether the jolly socialite had the capacity to appreciate Freuds sense of irony. Scrutinizing Freuds Body Sigmund Freud loved little details. In a 1910 letter to his old friend from adolescent years, Eduard Silberstein, Freud pleaded, I should very much like to hear in detail how things are with you (Boehlich 1990, 185). A few short weeks later, Freud wrote to Oskar Pfister, these psychoanalytic matters are

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intelligible only if presented in pretty full and complete detail, just as an analysis really gets going only when the patient descends to minute details from the abstractions which are their surrogate (Freud and Meng 1963, 38). As a clinician, I have derived great benefit from Freuds observations that every small detail of human psychology, not matter how arcane or obscure, can be of value. Freud became increasingly preoccupied with detail, as his essay The Moses of Michelangelo (1914)to cite but one examplereveals only too clearly. For Freud, it mattered greatly why Michelangelo Buonarotti sculpted the arms of Moses as he did, and why he interlaced the fingers of Moses in his marble beard in such a particular fashion. Towards the end of his life, Freud noted, in his classic paper Constructions in Analysis (1937), that, when offering a construction to a patient, The point must be gone into in detail (262). Of course, in spite of Freuds love of details, he also knew that one could overestimate them, perhaps in a morbid manner. In his analysis of the seventeenth-century Bavarian painter Christoph Haizmann, a gentleman ostensibly possessed by the Devil, Freud cautioned that the danger of overvaluing trifles seems especially great (1923, 93). I leave it to the reader to decide whether my careful preservation of these Freudian minutiae represents something of interest, or rather an eccentric preoccupation with the parental body, which, in spite of years of analysis, continues to persist. Suite 6 4 Martys Yard 17 Hampstead High Street London NW3 1QW England Kahr14@aol.com References
Boehlich, Walter, ed. 1990. The Letters of Sigmund Freud to Eduard Silberstein: 18711881. Trans. Arnold J. Pomerans. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press. Falzeder, Ernst, ed. 2002. The Complete Correspondence of Sigmund Freud and Karl Abraham, 19071925. Trans. Caroline Schwarzacher. London: Karnac. Freud, Sigmund. 1896a. Heredity and the Aetiology of the Neuroses. S.E., 3:14356. . 1896b. Further Remarks on the Neuro-Psychoses of Defence. S.E., 3:16285. . 1905. Three Essays on the Theory of Sexuality. S.E., 130243.

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. 1914. The Moses of Michelangelo. S.E., 13:21136. . 1917. Introductory Lectures on Psychoanalysis. Part Three. S.E., 16:243463. . 1923. A Seventeenth-Century Demonological Neurosis. S.E., 19:72105. . 1931. Female Sexuality. S.E., 21:22543. . 1937. Constructions in Analysis. S.E., 23:25769. . 1940. An Outline of Psychoanalysis. S.E., 23:144207. . 1992. The Diary of Sigmund Freud: 19291939. A Record of the Final Decade. Ed. and trans. Michael Molnar. London: Hogarth Press. Galatopoulous, Stelios. 1998. Maria Callas: Sacred Monster. New York: Simon and Schuster. Kahr, Brett. 1991. The Sexual Molestation of Children: Historical Perspectives. Journal of Psychohistory, 19:191214. . 1999. Psychoanalysis and Paedophilia: The Psychodynamics of Young Sex Offenders. Unpublished Typescript. Marinelli, Lydia. 2009. Fort, Da: The Cap in the Museum. Trans. Christopher Barber. Psychoanalysis and History, 11:11720. Masson, Jeffrey Moussaieff. 1984. The Assault on Truth: Freuds Suppression of the Seduction Theory. New York: Farrar, Straus and Giroux. Maxwell, Elsa. 1954. R.S.V.P.: Elsa Maxwells Own Story. Boston: Little, Brown. Meng, Heinrich, and Ernst L. Freud, eds. Psychoanalysis and Faith: The Letters of Sigmund Freud and Oskar Pfister. Trans. Eric Mosbacher. London: Hogarth Press. Natterson, Joseph M. 1966. Theodor Reik: Masochism in Modern Man. In Franz Alexander, Samuel Eisenstein, and Martin Grotjahn, eds., Psychoanalytic Pioneers. New York: Basic Books, pp. 24964.