Anna Freud (1885-1982) was Sigmund Freud’s youngest daughter, and his closest emotional and intellectual companion, as well.
For nearly a century now it’s been a well-kept secret that the love of Anna’s life was another woman.
And that was a problem for Sigmund, who agreed with medical colleagues that lesbianism is a symptom of the medical syndrome they called “hysteria.” But Sigmund took concern about lesbianism one or two steps further than his colleagues. He considered it an actual gateway to profound mental illness. Worse (for him, regarding Anna), he said it is almost always caused by faulty fathering.
HYSTERICAL: ANNA FREUD’S STORY is Anna’s “lost memoir.” In it she tells of coming of age in a household in which the stories of deeply neurotic, often sexually troubled patients were standard conversational fare. She recounts the wildly inappropriate conversion therapy imposed on her by her father. She tells of her family’s escape from the Nazis, and of their years of exile in London. These are years in which Sigmund aged and died, and in which Anna and her beloved Dorothy founded orphanages and schools for traumatized children.
HYSTERICAL reads like lively, sometimes deeply moving, and occasionally even hilarious autobiography. But it’s a historical novel written by a science journalist with a wicked sense of humor, an appreciation for both Anna’s plight and that of Sigmund, and an eye and ear for the tugs of war that happen in families. As Jeffrey Moussaieff Masson, once the Projects Director of the Freud Archives, describes it, HYSTERICAL “is the book we all wish Anna Freud had had the courage to write.”
HYSTERICAL has been named an “Over the Rainbow” book by the Gay, Lesbian, Bisexual, and Transgender Round The American Library Association. Author Rebecca Coffey is an award-winning journalist, documentary filmmaker, and radio commentator. Also a humorist, she is the author of NIETZSCHE’S ANGEL FOOD CAKE: And Other “Recipes” for the Intellectually Famished.
“Journalist Coffey . . . presents an avidly researched, shrewd, and unnerving first novel that purports to be the lost autobiography of Anna Freud. . . . Coffey offers some truly shocking disclosures about the Freud family in this complexly entertaining, sexually dramatic, acidly funny novel of genius and absurdity, insight and delusion, independence and loyalty.”—Booklist
“Like a therapy session, HYSTERICAL tunnels very deeply into Anna’s childhood experiences—thoughts, events, dreams, fantasies—and like a therapy session, the facets of what are revealed are at times disturbing and uncomfortable. Add to all that the inherent struggle between Sigmund and Anna, which twists and deepens as they both age, especially as Anna comes into her sexuality, and you’ve got a plot so rife with tension it’ll make you squirm. . . . Hysterical approaches its subject with remarkable, even agile, tenderness and understanding—Coffey gives Anna a voice, one that history has thus far not allowed her.” —LAMDA Literary
“Completely absorbing and entirely believable, HYSTERICAL is both a lovely work and a treasure. This is the book we all wish Anna Freud had had the courage to write.” —Jeffrey Moussaieff Masson, author The Assault on Truth: Freud’s Suppression of the Seduction Theory and former Projects Director of The Freud Archives
“Rebecca Coffey’s imagination knows no bounds. She makes you believe this is exactly the way it all happened. HYSTERICAL is sad, funny, painful, strange, outrageous, and disturbing. If we can’t have Anna’s diaries, this is the next best thing.”—
For nearly a century now it’s been a well-kept secret that the love of Anna’s life was another woman.
And that was a problem for Sigmund, who agreed with medical colleagues that lesbianism is a symptom of the medical syndrome they called “hysteria.” But Sigmund took concern about lesbianism one or two steps further than his colleagues. He considered it an actual gateway to profound mental illness. Worse (for him, regarding Anna), he said it is almost always caused by faulty fathering.
HYSTERICAL: ANNA FREUD’S STORY is Anna’s “lost memoir.” In it she tells of coming of age in a household in which the stories of deeply neurotic, often sexually troubled patients were standard conversational fare. She recounts the wildly inappropriate conversion therapy imposed on her by her father. She tells of her family’s escape from the Nazis, and of their years of exile in London. These are years in which Sigmund aged and died, and in which Anna and her beloved Dorothy founded orphanages and schools for traumatized children.
HYSTERICAL reads like lively, sometimes deeply moving, and occasionally even hilarious autobiography. But it’s a historical novel written by a science journalist with a wicked sense of humor, an appreciation for both Anna’s plight and that of Sigmund, and an eye and ear for the tugs of war that happen in families. As Jeffrey Moussaieff Masson, once the Projects Director of the Freud Archives, describes it, HYSTERICAL “is the book we all wish Anna Freud had had the courage to write.”
HYSTERICAL has been named an “Over the Rainbow” book by the Gay, Lesbian, Bisexual, and Transgender Round The American Library Association. Author Rebecca Coffey is an award-winning journalist, documentary filmmaker, and radio commentator. Also a humorist, she is the author of NIETZSCHE’S ANGEL FOOD CAKE: And Other “Recipes” for the Intellectually Famished.
“Journalist Coffey . . . presents an avidly researched, shrewd, and unnerving first novel that purports to be the lost autobiography of Anna Freud. . . . Coffey offers some truly shocking disclosures about the Freud family in this complexly entertaining, sexually dramatic, acidly funny novel of genius and absurdity, insight and delusion, independence and loyalty.”—Booklist
“Like a therapy session, HYSTERICAL tunnels very deeply into Anna’s childhood experiences—thoughts, events, dreams, fantasies—and like a therapy session, the facets of what are revealed are at times disturbing and uncomfortable. Add to all that the inherent struggle between Sigmund and Anna, which twists and deepens as they both age, especially as Anna comes into her sexuality, and you’ve got a plot so rife with tension it’ll make you squirm. . . . Hysterical approaches its subject with remarkable, even agile, tenderness and understanding—Coffey gives Anna a voice, one that history has thus far not allowed her.” —LAMDA Literary
“Completely absorbing and entirely believable, HYSTERICAL is both a lovely work and a treasure. This is the book we all wish Anna Freud had had the courage to write.” —Jeffrey Moussaieff Masson, author The Assault on Truth: Freud’s Suppression of the Seduction Theory and former Projects Director of The Freud Archives
“Rebecca Coffey’s imagination knows no bounds. She makes you believe this is exactly the way it all happened. HYSTERICAL is sad, funny, painful, strange, outrageous, and disturbing. If we can’t have Anna’s diaries, this is the next best thing.”—
