Freud, Yofi and a mystery Chow
Ok, so the title of this post is a tad deceptive: Sigmund Freud’s talking cure never went entirely to the dogs. (Update: And, as has been called to my attention, it’s also a tad confusing: this post has nothing to do with curing barking in dogs.) But the father of psychoanalysis’s close relationship with the canines in his household did carry through to his practice — and to that of his daughter, Anna.
In Part 1 of this series, I explored Freud’s late life case of puppy love. Here I discuss the impact his bond with dogs had on his treatment sessions.
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The Freud Family Dogs
First, a disclaimer: I have no primary sources for this story; it comes from Allan Showalter — aka Dr.HGuy — who heard it from his teacher, Roy Grinker Sr. Grinker was analyzed by Freud from 1933 to 1935 and founded the psychiatry program at Michael Reese Hospital in Chicago.
According to Showalter in Freud and His Damn Dog:
Freud and his daughter, Anna (also an analyst), both kept dogs (Freud had a chow named Yofi and Anna had a giant wolfhound) that had the run of the offices and shared waiting room. Both dogs would start barking whenever anyone rang the doorbell. The wolfhound… would immediately start sniffing Grinker’s genitals. Grinker reported that, as a consequence, he always entered Freud’s office ‘with a high level of castration anxiety.’ Read More
Psychoanalysis & Dogs, Part 3: Freud’s Last Dog
Freud and Lun, Vienna 1937
I hesitated to tell this final chapter of the Freud-and-dogs story because of its difficult ending, but the truth isn’t always uplifting. As an antidote, I promise to continue this series with more cheering segments.
In Part 1, I discussed Freud’s late life arrival at puppy love, including how my great uncle’s butcher shop provided meat for Yofi, Freud’s culturally Jewish — if not observant — chow. In Part 2, I talked about the role the family dogs played in Anna and Sigmund Freud’s psychoanalytic practice.
Here I explore Freud’s final months in Vienna and the last year of his life in London, a time marked by canine bonding — and betrayal.
A Dog Book Translation
A bit of background. Freud and his “Jewish science” were never in favor with Hitler — his books were burned in Berlin in 1933 — and in 1938, when the Nazis took over Austria, Freud’s life and that of his family were in danger. It was not easy to leave Vienna under the watchful eyes of the Gestapo, however, and connections had to be called in.
In a review of Mark Edmundson’s The Death of Sigmund Freud: Fascism, Psychoanalysis and the Rise of Fundamentalism [note: in the America version of this book, the subtitle is "The Legacy of His Last Days"], John Gray writes: