Home > The dreadful Dr. Sigmund Freud condemning knowingly his sisters to death ?
The dreadful Dr. Sigmund Freud condemning knowingly his sisters to death ?
by Open-Publishing - Sunday 29 September 20131 comment
Freud condemning knowingly his sisters to death ? A very bad novel.
by french historian Elisabeth Roudinesco
Le Monde, literary supplement, September 20th 2013.
Macedonian writer into Gender Studies, Goce Smilevski states in his latest novel about an alleged known episode in the life of Sigmund Freud to show that the founder of psychoanalysis was a misogynistic pervert, fascinated by Nazism, obsessed with money and masturbation : in short, a repulsive character.
To do so, he built a novel written in the first person, but the narrator is no other than Adolfina Freud, one of Freud’s sisters, turned into a witness of Fin-de-siècle Vienna for amateurs of Grand Guignol.
But just before being gassed at Theresienstadt, she recounts her fate and that of several abused women by famous artists. Throughout the pages, we are told the lot of two of her fellows in sorority: Klara Klimt and Ottilie Kafka, victims of their appalling brothers.
Reinvented by Smilevski - who seems to ignore that there were no gas chambers at Therensienstadt - Adolfina depicts the beginning of her story by a scene on May 1938 during when she would have begged her brother Sigmund to take her with him in exile in London with her other three sisters: he would have simply added four names on the "list" next to those of other family members, so that all might be saved.
But Freud refuses to answer her as he stroked two statuettes of his collection: a small monkey and a mother-goddess naked. Adolfina then tells how, in her youth, after she had been left by her lover, the same brother would have helped her, without any comforting words, to stop a wanted pregnancy. After describing other misfortunes, she completes her plea by the mention of a breastfeeding scene, symbol of the greatness of motherhood, which she was deprived by an abortionist brother, yet entranced by the famous Bellini’s Virgin and Child.
We should laugh reading this maternalist book, dowdy and filled with clichés. But we are astonished when we know that it has been translated into twenty languages, received an award and is intended to prove historians that Freud was actually the first responsible for the extermination of her sisters.
To make matters worse, the French publisher has chosen another title: The list of Freud, when the literal translation would have given Freud ’s sister. A way to turn Freud into an anti-Schindler.
It has to be noted and reminded that Freud did not write any "list" when he left Vienna on June 4th, 1938, with Martha, his wife, Anna, his daughter, Paula Fichtl, his housekeeper, Lün, his dog and Dr. Josefine Stross.
None of the characters of this story was able to obtain an exit permit for Adolfina and her sisters, all four older than 70 years old. Adolfina died of malnutrition in Theresienstadt on February 5th, 1943, Paula was gassed at Maly Trostinec along with Maria and Rosa Graf at Treblinka in October 1942.
We would love a writer to take up the pen to tell the story of this tragedy. But to do so, he would still have to put in epigraph Alexandre Dumas’ precept: “We have the right to rape history on the condition of begetting beautiful children”.
Forum posts
7 November 2013, 12:05, by Goce Smilevski
Response to Madam Elisabeth R.
In her review of my novel La Liste de Freud, Elisabeth Roudinesco states that my book “intends to prove the historians that Freud was actually the most responsible for the extermination of his sisters”. The novels do not intend to prove anything nor to historians, nor to anyone else, as the art of the novel is not about proving, but is result of imagination, even when the author uses facts. It is a fact that, when leaving Vienna occupied by Nazis, Sigmund Freud helped, among other people, his two home-maids to come with him to London, and also his wife’s sister. Why he did not took his own four sisters with himself will probably remain an unresolved question. How it is described in my novel should be perceived in the context of the art of the novel, and the aim of my novel certainly is not an accusation.
The misunderstanding of the relation of historiography and fiction is not the only problem in Madam Roudinesco’s text. She also misunderstood the way characters are represented, and insists that in La liste de Freud Sigmund Freud is portrayed as “fascinated by Nazism”, while, on the contrary, in the novel he expresses his strong disgust towards Nazism.
And this is not the end of the misunderstandings. For example, Madam Roudinesco insists that my novel “seems to ignore that there were no gas chambers at Therensienstadt”, while on the pages 45 – 46 from the French edition, it is clear that the characters are transferred from Theresienstadt, where there are no gas chambers, to a camp where there are gas chambers. It is a fact that the four sisters died in different camps and under different conditions, but I felt there is poetic strength representing the four sisters facing the death together.
Without giving any aesthetic argument, Madam Roudinesco’s states: “We should laugh reading this book maternalist, dowdy and full of clichés . But we are astonished when we know that it has been translated into twenty languages”. We should laugh at Madam Roudinesco’s review on my novel. But we are astonished when we know that she is a psychoanalyst with a notable reputation. She says that in my novel Freud is “obsessed with masturbation”. There is only one scene mentioning masturbation, and it is when the thirteen years old Sigmund masturbates. The claim that this boy is obsessed with masturbation can be done only by psychoanalyst that is not a specialist, but a dilettante.