Spring Break
Freud discusses book
by Matthew Brock
News | 3/11/08
Posted online at 3:23 AM EST on 3/11/08
/ Last updated at 7:00 PM EST on 3/11/08
Sophie Freud, granddaughter of Sigmund Freud, the father of psychoanalysis, discussed her new book, Living in the Shadow of the Freud Family, and signed copies last Thursday before a packed Shapiro Campus Center Multipurpose Room.
The book, she said, is a compilation of her family's memoirs and a biography of her mother, Esti Drucker Freud. A recipient of the National Association of Social Workers Lifetime Achievement Award, Sophie Freud said the reason she is publishing a book at the age of 84 is to try to "postpone death."
Dr. Sharon Sokoloff, director of Brandeis' Osher Lifelong Learning Institute where Freud currently teaches the literature course "Personal Tales of Madness and Sadness," introduced Freud as a member of BOLLI's elected advisory council and leader of BOLLI's green movement, calling her a "straight-shooting, compassionate, intellectually vibrant woman."
"Some of you may have come because of the Freud name, so I will take you back 100 years to the beginning of World War I, when my father enlisted in WWI," Freud began her speech.
She discussed her parents' early relationship and read excerpts from love letters written by her mother to her father while he was a prisoner of war in Italy during WWI. "I can never throw away anything, so I had to write this book and put the letters in this book so they won't get lost," she joked.
One of the pieces she read was a letter in which her mother accepted her father's marriage proposal. "I read this to you to show you how much sexual morals have changed and to give you an example of love letters at that time," she said.
"[These letters] were the highlight of my parents' marriage," she said. "It all went downhill after that."
Freud spent the majority of her lecture discussing the rise of Nazi Germany and her family's flight from Vienna, which eventually brought her and her mother to the United States. "History takes on a new reality when it is told by the characters that lived through it," she said.
The book, she said, is a compilation of her family's memoirs and a biography of her mother, Esti Drucker Freud. A recipient of the National Association of Social Workers Lifetime Achievement Award, Sophie Freud said the reason she is publishing a book at the age of 84 is to try to "postpone death."
Dr. Sharon Sokoloff, director of Brandeis' Osher Lifelong Learning Institute where Freud currently teaches the literature course "Personal Tales of Madness and Sadness," introduced Freud as a member of BOLLI's elected advisory council and leader of BOLLI's green movement, calling her a "straight-shooting, compassionate, intellectually vibrant woman."
"Some of you may have come because of the Freud name, so I will take you back 100 years to the beginning of World War I, when my father enlisted in WWI," Freud began her speech.
She discussed her parents' early relationship and read excerpts from love letters written by her mother to her father while he was a prisoner of war in Italy during WWI. "I can never throw away anything, so I had to write this book and put the letters in this book so they won't get lost," she joked.
One of the pieces she read was a letter in which her mother accepted her father's marriage proposal. "I read this to you to show you how much sexual morals have changed and to give you an example of love letters at that time," she said.
"[These letters] were the highlight of my parents' marriage," she said. "It all went downhill after that."
Freud spent the majority of her lecture discussing the rise of Nazi Germany and her family's flight from Vienna, which eventually brought her and her mother to the United States. "History takes on a new reality when it is told by the characters that lived through it," she said.
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