Living in the Shadow of the Freud Family (review)

On December 5, 1942, readers of The New Yorkermagazine's "The Talk of the Town" pages were informed that "Sigmund Freud's granddaughter, a pretty girl of eighteen named Sophie, has just arrived in New York" (Robinson and Maloney 1942, 14). Sophie came to the United States along with her mother, Ernestine (Esti) Freud, the wife of Freud's second child and oldest son, Martin. In her adopted country, Sophie achieved academic success at Radcliffe College of Harvard University and the Simmons School of Social Work, ultimately earning a Ph.D. from the Florence Heller School of Social Welfare (Brandeis University) in 1970. She established a successful career as a practicing clinical social worker and social work educator. Now in retirement at age eighty-three, as Professor Emerita of Social Work at Simmons College, Sophie Freud has achieved international fame as a writer, lecturer, and often-interviewed critic of her grandfather's theories.

In 1988, Sophie published her first book, My Three Mothers and Other Passions(Freud 1988; see Silverstein 1990). This book, containing twenty-one chapters, was a mixture of rewritten versions of professional lectures and scholarly pieces, along with autobiographical self-confrontations and confessions. The final chapter was titled "Mother and Daughter: An Epitaph." This chapter was based on a talk Sophie had given in November 1980, a few days after her mother Esti's death. Here, Sophie reflected on how conflicted her relationship with her mother had been and how she had left her mother to die alone in her hospital bed in New York, as Esti lost her battle with cancer:

I did not gladly hold her old hand. I could not find the words of comfort that I might have found in my heart for many others. I sat next to her bed with an icy and armored heart and waited for the day to pass to return to Boston . . . waited until I could flee in terror lest her spirit invade me and defeat my lifelong struggle to be separate and different.

(328)

Sophie Freud's new book, Living in the Shadow of the Freud Family, is the product of her continuing struggle for individuation and her attempts to work through her conflicted emotions concerning her mother, her father, and the Freud family. It serves as a "prequel" to My Three Mothers and Other Passionsin that it eloquently and movingly tells the history of Esti and Martin Freud's stormy marriage, breakup, and estrangement; Sophie's childhood and adolescent relationship with Esti and their abandonment by Martin; Esti's and Sophie's narrow escape from Nazi-occupied Europe, their settlement in the United States and their subsequent estrangement; Esti's professional success as a speech and voice therapist, culminating in her earning a Ph.D. from the New School for Social Research; Sophie's education and professional development; Sophie's forty-year marriage, childrearing and divorce; and Esti's and Sophie's views concerning Sigmund Freud and various members of the Freud family and the Freuds' evolving family drama.

The heart of Sophie Freud's new book is the text of Esti Freud's autobiography. Esti wrote her manuscript when she was seventy-nine years old. She did so at Sophie's urging. Also included in the book are letters written by Esti, Sophie, Sigmund Freud, Martha Freud, Martin Freud, Walter Freud (Sophie's brother), and other assorted Freud family members and family friends. In addition, the book contains entries from Sophie's adolescent diary with running commentary from Sophie, her brother Walter, and some of Sophie's and Walter's children. All of the above elements are skillfully woven into a beautiful mosaic by Sophie Freud as she presents a compelling historical narrative that draws on, connects, and blends parts of all the manuscripts at her disposal to tell the history of her family, a story that spans the entire twentieth century. The reader is drawn into the captivating narrative history of a fractured family with a...