— Free Preview of HYSTERICAL: Anna Freud’s Story

The free preview (“Author’s Note” and “Chapter 1”) are below in full text, though you can download the file here if you prefer.

Hysterical: Anna Freud’s Story is the fact-based “lost memoir” of Sigmund Freud’s daughter Anna. She really was a lesbian. He really did think that lesbianism was a gateway to lifelong mental illness. He really did think that he was to blame for her lesbianism. (All fathers are, he thought.) He really did think psychoanalysis could cure it. And so, he really did psychoanalyze her — about her childhood sexual fantasies — off and on for about three years when she was in her 30s.

Yes, it’s a lot. Weaving a grand tale out of a pile of crazy facts, Hysterical: Anna Freud’s Story lets the pioneering child psychologist freely examine her childhood and all of the subsequent crazy forces that shaped her life. Booklist called it “avidly researched, shrewd, and unnerving” as well as “complexly entertaining, sexually dramatic, [and] acidly funny.” LAMDA Literary said it’s “got a plot so rife with tension it’ll make you squirm.” Oprah’s O Magazine recommended it as summer reading. The Ms. Magazine blog called Hysterical “as funny and occasionally frightening as the title hints.” Hysterical was named an Over the Rainbow book by the American Library Association. See more reviews.

The Real Story Behind the Novel

Chapter 1

If you had seen my Papa in my young years, you would have noticed the light burning in his eyes. The nights are long in Vienna midwinter. And when I was born, back in the time of royals and castles, even in broad daylight coal dust darkened the sky. Thankfully, light beamed out of Papa’s eyes morning and night on his tromps around the Ringstrasse. On his smoking-and-thinking walks he illuminated a path for everyone.

Funny, aren’t they? The exaggerations in children’s memories?

But I’ll wager that each one of my siblings remember Papa’s eyes that way and recall being obliged to troop behind him twice a day. Before breakfast and again just before supper we ran like mad to keep up, all six of us plus Nanny and a governess. Bundled in layers of wool, we dodged carts and made “unnecessary noise.”

Summers in the mountains were best, though, for there we could relax. Our family hikes were leisurely, quiet, mesmerizing—just strolls, really. Papa and his brood in the mountains in the bramble. There were endless days of mushroom hunting, with Papa calling, “Come out! Come out! It’s safe to come out!” and then, having enticed fungi, trapping them in his hat, much to our wild delight.

“One of life’s real pleasures,” Papa would proudly announce, “is rooting out wild things.”

If you had visited us then, if you had seen Papa in his tall socks and warm-weather pants, you wouldn’t have suspected. His Alpine attire held no clues to his habits and fancies. You wouldn’t have known about his sunburned face going even redder at night while he talked to Mama. You would not have imagined Papa and the dog yelping together in the summer garden in the early morning dew.

Winters. Six children, Mama, Papa, my Tante Minna, one nanny, and one governess. Papa’s patients. One bathroom. Papa always said that stuttering and lisping are upwards psychological displacements of conflicts about excrementory functions. We all lisped. Even Papa lisped sometimes.

My sister Sophie was Papa’s favorite child; she was older than me by two years. She was far prettier, she hated me, and already she knew how to wrap a man around her little finger. My sister Mathilde, eight years my senior, was obedient and kind, and for these qualities Papa was grateful. I especially liked her kindness. But she often sang aloud to herself; she couldn’t help it, even though extraneous sounds annoyed Papa. My three boisterous brothers were all loud, too, which set Papa on edge.

And so I developed a singular talent that afforded me my own special relationship with my father. I alone among our gaggle could promise to be quiet and then do it.

When I was five or so, Papa rented an apartment downstairs from our family’s quarters. He used it as a professional suite. He couldn’t really afford the apartment. He’d trained as a neurologist, but only rarely accepted neurology patients. And not all of his psychology patients paid him for his attention. In fact, he paid some of them to allow him to ask questions and learn. But poor Mama just needed him to bring home some bacon. In an unforgettable alto tone she would weep loudly about the added rent. And of course Papa’s face would turn red.

Papa wanted deference. But he didn’t want to shove away his entire family. So while I was still too young for school, he routinely invited me to accompany him downstairs to his suite of professional rooms. While he met with patients in his consulting room, I played on the Persian rugs of his waiting room. Sometimes, between patients’ visits, he read to me from books of fairy tales.

They’re not subtle stuff, those fairy tales that have traveled for a thousand years through India, the Mideast, and Western Europe. They’re not for the squeamish. Giants eat little boys’ livers. Parents chuck children into the woods to fend off witches all by themselves.

Good always triumphs in fairy tales, of course. But whenever Papa returned to his consulting room, I wondered about the times when good might not triumph in time. It never seemed to when Sophie tormented me. It hadn’t seemed to for the pure-at-heart children in Jack and the Beanstalk whose livers were eaten by the giant before Jack arrived.

The waiting room had no toys. Aside from my doll, I had nothing with which to entertain myself when I waited for Papa. Usually, right after Papa entered the consulting room with a patient, I stuck out my tongue at his consulting room door. Once, while proudly appreciating my tongue’s length and flagrant pinkness, I noticed that my vision had changed. It had lost focus of everything except for the tongue itself. Of course, I’d just crossed my eyes. Still, I held them in their tongue-seeking position while I moved my head about. The effect was dizzying.

I didn’t really dare walk that way. But I did stumble upon the discovery that, when my eyes were crossed, within Papa’s ornately woven Persian rugs I could see more than the abstract designs that everyone else saw. I could see people. The clumps of wool and silk in one rug, for example, resembled women. If I jiggled my head while keeping my eyes crossed, those women danced. The spiky yellow and brown forms in a second rug became manticores racing about. A third rug’s lumps resembled vegetables and fresh fruit eerily floating through the air.

My single boldest action while alone in Papa’s waiting room was when I looked one day at my tongue while standing on my head inthe middle of a large, circular rug. From that perspective I saw a tower and houses made of stone. I even saw village people. The rug itself was surrounded by a deep blue border, and so the village itself was surrounded by a sea to which tiny, woolen dots of children ran to swim. Wouldn’t you know, Papa walked in with a patient while I was enjoying the view. Evidently my cheeks were purple with blood flow and my eyes were, well, funny looking.

“If you fall, your face will stay like that,” Papa warned, commenting not at all on the fact that my undergarments were on display.

And so I called my own halt to the tongue game. But I still enjoyed the rugs now that I knew they were neighborhoods.

I also took up a chalk-and-slate activity that today’s psychologists might call “counter-phobic.” For example, if Sophie had bossed me around earlier that day, I drew pictures of her bound and gagged. I often drew pictures in which I was bigger than she—bigger than Mathilde, even. With my crude sketches I changed everything I didn’t like, even some of the fairy tales Papa read. In my versions, beanstalks didn’t grow into the clouds; Cinderella’s mother did not die; and Cinderella had no sisters.

Fascinated by what I created, between appointments Papa helped me turn my graphic tales into stories with words.

The drawings I made of “The Frog Prince are long lost. Only the words I dictated have survived.

The Frog Prince

Once upon a time there was a princess who, when sitting on the edge of a lake, dropped a precious ball that her papa had given her. A frog retrieved it for her, thinking he might get a kiss in return.

“But I don’t want to kiss a frog,” the princess complained to her papa once she had the ball back.

With no problem at all, her papa understood and explained the problem to the frog.

The king walked with the princess as she led the frog to a wide creek, where she pointed him downstream towards the river.

The princess and her papa waved gaily as the frog lifted up his little butt and hopped in.

The frog swam away disappointed, for he had hoped that the princess would be his love. Still, he was pretty sure he could find the river.

“Bye, bye!” the princess whispered. She looked beautiful with her curly, blonde hair and her new princess shoes.

“Bye, bye!” the frog whispered back, without complaining. What a prince he was!

The frog went on to live happily ever after, and so did the princess and her papa.