Hysterical: Anna Freud's Story by Rebecca Coffey

7 of 17
Hysterical: Anna Freud's Story
360 pages; She Writes Press
Hysterical: Anna Freud's Story, by Rebecca Coffey, focuses on another enigmatic aspect of Freud's world: his close connection with his daughter Anna, who became his disciple. Coffey's tale uses Jewish jokes and other humor to humanize the family dynamic, and delicately delineate the tension between Anna's devotion to her father and her enduring attachment to Dorothy Burlingham, an heir to the Tiffany fortune. Coffey also touches on the impropriety of the doctor's treating his own daughter and the discomfort she must have experienced as a result—though in this fictional version, Anna confesses: "Of course in my account to Papa, I elaborated and lied. Personally, I think that honesty in psychoanalysis is over-rated."
— Leigh Haber