Hysterical: Anna Freud's Story
Rebecca Coffey
A brilliant, haunting work of literary and historical fiction, HYSTERICAL: Anna Freud's Story reimagines the extraordinary—and often overlooked—life of Anna Freud, the youngest daughter of Sigmund Freud.
Imagine growing up smart, ambitious, and queer in a home where your father believes women should aspire to be wives and insists that lesbianism is both pathological and curable—especially by him. Then imagine that this same father insists on analyzing you, probing your dreams and desires while dismissing your autonomy.
And imagine, further, that this household—celebrated as the birthplace of psychoanalysis—is thick with secrets: emotional cruelty, medical addictions, buried scandals, shifting loyalties, and a level of manipulation that even today’s psychoanalysts prefer not to discuss. These are the unspoken truths Anna inherited.
Ultimately, Anna loved Dorothy Tiffany Burlingham, heir to the Tiffany fortune, for 54 years. Together they raised a family and helped build the modern field of child psychology. But before that, Anna had to navigate childhood, adolescence, and early adulthood inside a famous family where her romantic longings were considered dangerous—and where truth itself was often bent to serve her father's theories.
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What was it really like to grow up the lesbian daughter of “the great Sigmund Freud”?
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What were the Freud family’s most closely guarded skeletons?
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What shadows lie behind the creation of psychoanalysis—shadows that later generations of analysts would prefer remain hidden?
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And how did Anna find the strength to defy her father so thoroughly while continuing to love him, study under him, and ultimately surpass him?
HYSTERICAL weaves a grand tale from a pile of astonishing and unsettling facts, allowing Anna Freud to freely examine the pressures, betrayals, and fierce attachments that shaped her life.
Moving, sharply observed, and deeply feminist, HYSTERICAL will resonate with readers of literary historical fiction, biographical fiction, women’s fiction, queer history, and stories about psychology, early 20th-century Europe, and complex family dynamics. It is a compelling narrative about power, identity, survival, and the hidden histories of women whose lives shaped modern thought.
Perfect for readers of Maggie O’Farrell, Paula McLain, and Geraldine Brooks.
Acclaim for Hysterical
"Journalist Coffey, seen in Scientific American and Psychology Today, presents an avidly researched, shrewd, and unnerving first novel that purports to be the lost autobiography of Anna Freud. . . Coffey offers some truly shocking disclosures about the Freud family in this complexly entertaining, sexually dramatic, acidly funny novel of genius and absurdity, insight and delusion, independence and loyalty. Illustrated with archival photographs and backed by a substantial bibliography, this is an electrifying, imaginative portrait of an overlooked historical figure of great significance: fascinating, courageous, and steadfast Anna Freud."
—Booklist
" Like a therapy session, nnels very deeply into Anna's childhood experiences—thoughts, events, dreams, fantasies—and like a therapy session, the facets of what are revealed are at times disturbing and uncomfortable. Add to all that the inherent struggle between Sigmund and Anna, which twists and deepens as they both age, especially as Anna comes into her sexuality, and you've got a plot so rife with tension it'll make you squirm.“
—LAMBDA Literary
"As funny and occasionally frightening as the title hints."
—Ms.
Author Rebecca Coffey
Rebecca Coffey has contributed science journalism to Scientific American, Discover, Forbes, Salon, The New York Daily News, The Chicago Tribune, The Seattle Times, JSTOR Daily, Dame, Psychology Today, Vermont Public Radio, and the Genetic Literacy Project. She has appeared on syndicated talk shows like WNYC’s The Takeaway, WAMC’s 51 Percent, Fox News’ Happening Now, The Bob Edwards Show, The Jim Bohannon Show, The Stephanie Miller Show, NPR’s Air Talk with Larry Mantle, and on major-market programs produced by NPR affiliates in New York, Boston, Hartford, Los Angeles, San Francisco, Albany, and Indianapolis. She regularly speaks at colleges and universities, at conferences, and on podcasts and was an invited presenter at the 50th Congress of the International Psychoanalytic Association in Buenos Aires, where she discussed her fact-based, historical novel Hysterical: Anna Freud’s Story.
