Patient and Painter: The Careers of Sergius Pankejeff

Who was the “Wolf Man”? The person behind this pseudonym may seem familiar to many; after all, “Wolf Man” is the name offered by Sigmund Freud to a patient whose case he discussed in his study of 1918, “From the History of an Infantile Neurosis” (“Aus der Geschichte einer infantilen Neurose”). This text is, in turn, one of Freud’s most famous case studies as it offers a new outline of Freud’s thoughts on human development and psychoanalytic theory. Indeed, not only Freud, but also his patient, was well aware of the significance of this work. The Wolf Man was therefore willing to disclose his “real” identity, to confess to being Sergius Pankejeff, not only a former patient of the famous Viennese doctor, but one who had contributed to the development of the psychoanalytic discipline. In contrast to Bertha Pappenheim (Freud’s and Joseph Breuer’s patient “Anna O.”) or Ida Bauer (Freud’s patient “Dora”), Pankejeff did not seek to hide behind the pseudonym. He did not seek to retreat from public view, but wrote his memoirs instead.¹

Although Pankejeff had worked for many years after the Second World War as an employee in an insurance agency, he saw his profession as that of an academic painter.² He had, though, never attended an art academy. His life was marked by his illness, and until his death, he remained a psychoanalytic patient. Being a patient was perhaps his true occupation—and even his calling.

The Patient

In the year 1910, Freud was still eager to build his practice. He had published his manifesto of psychoanalysis, The Interpretation of Dreams (Die Traumdeutung) in 1899, but the book sold badly in the early years.³ He had already published a number of case studies and saw patients. Freud had a large family and financial difficulties. His theories were much discussed but not yet established, and he was fighting for recognition of his newly invented discipline. For many doctors and scholars, psychoanalysis appeared to be a rather questionable undertaking, and despite Freud’s ardent efforts to establish the field as a “science,” it was an uphill battle. Sciences were based on experiments that could be repeated, and would thus establish replicable evidence. Psychoanalysis did not work via experiments, and could not provide that kind of evidence. There remained doubt, always, and this doubt was even inscribed in the psychoanalytic theory.

This was only part of the story, however. Karl Lueger, who served as Vienna’s mayor until his death in 1910, had made anti-Semitism socially and politically acceptable. Freud was not only Jewish, psychoanalysis itself was thought of as a Jewish discipline—much to Freud’s chagrin.⁴ What Freud needed were non-Jewish students and colleagues, perhaps even a non-Jewish successor. Three years earlier, he had met Carl Gustav Jung and thought of him as a potential choice, but this possibility did not work out. Freud needed non-Jewish patients as well, and in particular male patients. Freud’s early studies were dedicated to the analysis of hysteria, and hysteria was viewed as a largely female illness at that time; indeed, many of his early patients were young women from the Jewish bourgeoisie—neighbors and the daughters or relatives of friends and acquaintances. Only by the end of the First World War, when traumatized soldiers flooded Vienna’s hospitals and doctor’s offices, was this gendered view of hysteria reconsidered and shell shock studied as a possibly hysteric disease.⁵

In 1910, however, something happened that must have appeared to Freud as a sort of miracle. A 23-year-old man entered Freud’s practice, and asked for help and treatment. He was a Russian aristocrat named Sergius Pankejeff and he appeared to be very rich. A servant accompanied him (Fig. 1). At his first meeting with Freud, he greeted him with anti-Semitic as well as obscene remarks. Freud was happy. Eagerly, Freud reported Pankejeff’s words to his colleague and friend Sándor Ferenczi: “Jewish Swindler, he would like to use me from behind and shit on my...