Meeting Freud’s Family by Paul Roazen (review)

HUMANITIES 241 chance to turn her personal history into a speaking part. This is his own wise refusal to allow her to seem foolish, or, one suspects, to seem foolish himself. Expressed simply through plot machinations that contrive to steal Clara's memories and history (actually she sells them), his narrative refusal to test the hypothesis of such transformation permits Egoyan to sustain Clara's slight pathos, and even to moralize it when she becomes the woman betrayed. Just as he does with Lisa's role and the mannered editing of his film, Egoyan's plotting, then, deliberately veils what he intends and leaves us asking what he means altogether. Whatever the director might have intended, common sense suggests that the obvious significance Speaking Parts implies is woefully sentimental, an obviousness Egoyan only complicates with melodramatic betrayals. Moreover, it should be understood, these complications derive from nothing mysterious or theoretical, which is what Burnett's facile essay wants anxiously to claim for Speaking Parts. Indeed, much about the film's plotting suggests ways Atom Egoyan continues to reveal himself still to be a somewhat classical man of the theatre (his field of study while a student at University of Toronto) more than he is the postmodern Canadian art-cinema filmmaker proclaimed in the press and in some classrooms. (BART TESTA) Paul Roazen. Meeting Freud's Family University of Massachusetts Press. $43.75 If you enjoy gossip, as many of us do, Meeting Freud's Family is a good read. This observation is not intended to trivialize Professor Roazen's contribution to the study of Freud. But since it is more autobiographical than his previous books, we can also enjoy Roazen's experience of interviewing Freud's surviving relatives, including the redoubtable 'Miss Freud.' Roazen claims that Anna Freud exuded such a regal bearing that, when his interview was ended, he started leaving with his back to her door. His wish to be entertaining as well as scholarly is suggested by the titled attached to some of the chapter headings: for example, '''Altogether Feminine": Mathilda Frel).d Hollitcher'; '''The Black Sheep": Dr. Esti Freud'; and I/LA Precisionist": Oliver Freud.' Perhaps because this ground has been so well covered in other books, the chaplers on 'The Freud Family in Perspective' and 'The Movement: Jones and Kleinianisrn' will probably be of greater interest to the uninitiated. Roazen contends that 'Once we see Freud in the context of his family life, we can begin to understand the human and social premises under which he worked. And we can gain some perspective on how he came to exert such an influence on his followers, who in turn were to have such an impact on twentieth-century thought.' While this domestic approach 242 LETTERS IN CANADA 1992 to understanding Freud's genius is limited, it seems to have worked for Roazen. His earlier books, especially Freud and His Followers (1975t and his biographies of Erik Erikson (1976) and Helene Deutsch (1985), are testimonials to Freud's enduring ability to inspire awe, fear, reverence, and scholarship. While Freud's family life is a legitimate field for scholarship, Roazen's preoccupation with the sexual lives of his subjects is perplexing. What are we to make of the interminable speculation about Freud's possible Lhanky-panky' with his sister-in-law Minna? And is it really necessary for us to know that Anna Freud may have been more than close friends with Dorothy Burlingham, co-founder of the Hampstead Child Therapy Clinic? Even more trifling is Roazen's revelation that his mentor, Dr Helene Deutsch, had once been 'intitnate' with Sandor Rado while they were undergoing analysis with Karl Abraham in Berlin. Exploring the underworld of psychoanalysis is not without its occupational hazards. With the other denizens, Roazen has also suffered severe bruises to his ego. Anna Freud, for example, who was quite vindictive, wrote, 'All I can say is that Roazen is a menace whatever he writes.' Turning this insult to his advantage, the intrepid Roazen says, 'Any independent writer should, I believe, be proud of such a tribute.' Anna Freud was not the only analyst to be outraged by Roazen. His book Brother Animal, The Story...