Imagine growing up at the tail end of the hysteria epidemic that swept Europe in the late 19th and early 20th centuries. You are sexually attracted to other girls, a proclivity that medical doctors of your era consider a symptom of hysteria. Your world-renowned father is one of them. Worse, he has built much of his reputation on his “discovery” that your sort of hysteria is always caused by the … the father and is curable by psychoanalysis.
Then he analyzes you.
Anna Freud (1895-1982) harbored a secret that could have shaken the foundations of her father’s growing legacy. Suspecting as much, Sigmund psychoanalyzed her. Was that “conversion therapy” the erotic echo chamber that he warned analysis always is? Who was Dorothy Burlingham, a figure that most of Sigmund’s and Anna’s biographers have tirelessly ignored? How did Anna manage to live a full life, raise a family with Dorothy, and become a guiding force for analysts, educators, and humanitarians—all while devoting herself to her homophobic father as he aged and died? HYSTERICAL is the fact-based, fictional autobiography of Anna Freud. In it, she tells her story for the first time.
HYSTERICAL has been named a 2015 “Over the Rainbow” book by the Gay, Lesbian, Bisexual, and Transgnder 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.”—Ellen Bass, author of The Courage to Heal
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Journalist and humorist Rebecca Coffee brings her keen intelligence, outrageous humor, wisdom, and compassion to two books about sex, Hysterical: Anna Freud’s Story (She Writes Press, 2014) and Science and Lust. In the story of Anna Freud, what do you do if you are a lesbian being analyzed by your father, Sigmund Freud, who believes lesbianism is a perversity brought on by bad fathering? This fascinating coming of age story is by turns shocking, funny, bizarre, and tender. And though it is a story about extraordinary people, it is also about family dynamics that are all too recognizable, both fraught and hopeful at the same time.
In exquisite prose and dialog that crackles with intensity, Rebecca Coffey explores the life of Anna Freud, the often-overlooked daughter of the legendary Sigmund Freud. Much has been written about Freud. But HYSTERICAL gives us a unique insight into one of the icons of psychology while illuminating Anna’s remarkable and little-known influence.
Hysterical is a lovely recreation of the old Vienna of Sigmund Freud, and a great opportunity to get to know the father of psychoanalysis through his daughter. A perfect read for anyone who’d been to therapy!
How can an author turn the life of a so-called minor figure into a remarkable autobiography? One need look no further than to Rebecca Coffey’s book, Hysterical, about the life of Anna Freud–the horrifically put-upon daughter of the famous (infamous) father of psychoanalysis, Sigmund Freud. Coffey’s book is fictional, but every word rings true. Almost every event she includes in breathtaking detail can be verified and those that lack source material are in keeping with what is known–and could easily have taken place. All of this makes for a sympathetic portrayal of a woman brilliant in her own right who was the victim of a man who would do anything (in this case to his own daughter) in order to keep his place in the world he has created. Anna, we learn faced many seemingly insurmountable challenges. Surviving her father may have been her greatest. Add to this Coffey’s addition of humor (yes, humor!) in the form of very funny jokes (yes, jokes!), and you have a book that you will not be able to put down. It is a tour-de-force. A good summer read? Yes!
I found it difficult to read.
A fantastic book. Freud has long since been debunked as a kook. After reading this every reader will wonder how he ever had influence over anyone save his tortured family.
This was a truly original read . After starting, you do believe that Jung’s gay daughter is really writing their story…It had its tragic moments and some that were really amusing. I think the author must have done extensive research to masterfully the Family Freud.
It was much better than I ever expected and having original Freud Family photos added to the characters .
I saw this book in Oprah magazine and purchased the next day. It was intriguing and informative. A great read.
Full disclosure: I’m no big fan of psychoanalysis, so Rebecca Coffey’s Hysterical: Anna Freud’s Story was just the book for me. Anna Freud’s mystique fascinates as Coffey looks at the emotional and sexual coming-of-age of Sigmund Freud’s lesbian daughter. Concerned that Anna as a young woman was too smart (she had “a masculine brain”) and had no interest whatsoever in male suitors, Sigmund took her into psychoanalysis. Anna’s analysis, of course, became a hall of mirrors for both Anna and Sigmund, and complex entertainment for the reader of this insightful and wickedly witty book.