Anna Freud. Poems, Prose, Translations

Brigitte Spreitzer makes Anna Freud`s literary texts (poems, small impressionistic pieces of prose, a fragment of a novel, occasional poetry, translations from the English) fully accessible in this book for the first time. The detailed preface contextualises these literary texts as paradigmatic sources, which are documenting the engagement of a young Austrian Jewish middle class woman with socio-historical and cultural conditions in Fin de siècle Vienna. The edition itself consists of three sections, which are arranged chronologically if possible: verse, prose, translations. The original English texts, which are at the basis of the translations, are added to allow insight to Anna Freud`s style of poetic translation. The commentary provides a critical apparatus, any explanations of the dating of documents, if possible identifications of persons or events and linkages to other documents. The editorial aim in terms of methodological decisions is to create both an edition convenient to read and to satisfy the standards of Editorial Philology, id est not to manipulate the original text. The lexicon of persons shall enable the readers to class persons mentioned in the preface and the commentary quickly, without being forced to use other works of reference during the reading. Anna Freud`s biographical data are following in a separate timetable. As soon as the final layout will be fixed, a register of persons with page references will be made. The edition of the literary texts written by Anna Freud longs to contribute to fill a gap of Freud-research especially with regard to the edition of Anna Freud`s writings of which the poetical writings are a historically considerable part. On this view this edition is meant as a contribution generally to the historiography of psychoanalysis and to the historiography of the life and work of Anna Freud in particular. Furthermore the book wants to make a contribution to the history and culture of modernity resp. Fin de siècle Vienna as well as to the history of women in the modern era, in so far as Anna Freud`s poetical uvre is part of a process, which is characterised by the efforts of women to gain access to culture, education and knowledge, to individual and professional scopes. Additionally, due to the fact that it is about the biological daughter of Sigmund Freud, the book illuminates by a concrete and thus unique example connections, relations and mutual interferences of psychoanalysis, constructions of femininity and individual life(s) of women at the moment of emergence. Finally that Anna Freud on the way to her profession as psychoanalyst by crossing the field of literature co- founded a theory of art wasn`t much mentioned until now: Her lecture "Schlagephantasie und Tagtraum" is taking into account her own poetical approaches as a subject of psychoanalytical exploration and is developing a theoretical view of the passage from daydreams to artistic (psychic) activity as an achievement of sublimation in terms of a psychoanalytical theory of culture. Lastly: Anna Freud kept the small amount of her poetical writings up to her death. Therefore she must have been very attached to them. It seems to be a kind of performance of a historical duty to save them for the future.