Freud and the Child Woman: The Memoirs of Fritz Wittels

Fritz Wittels (1880-1950) was a pioneering Viennese psychoanalyst, the first biographer of Freud, and friend and rival of Freud and of the great critic of psychoanalysis, the Viennese satirist Karl Kraus. Toward the end of his life, while living and practicing as an analyst in the United States, Wittels wrote a memoir of his early life and career in Vienna and his first impressions of America. Those memoirs are now published here for the first time, edited and introduced by Edward Timms, whose valuable explanatory notes reveal the identification of the "child woman" of the title, Irma Karczewska.
In his memoirs Wittels writes frankly and vividly about the erotic subculture of fin-de-siecle Vienna, early controversies within the Psychoanalytic Society, and the interactions between the two. Freud himself plays a crucial role in the story, and the erotic triangle in which Kraus, Wittels, and Irma Karczewska were involved is shown to have impinged directly on the activities of the famous Society. In his final chapters, Wittels reflects on the controversies that erupted in the New York Psychoanalytic Society during the late 1930s, especially his own opposition to the feminist psychology of Karen Horney.
Generously illustrated with a range of little-known photographs, this book sheds startling new light on the origins of psychoanalysis. It will appeal to historians of psychoanalysis, students of Freud, and anyone interested in the Viennese artistic avant-garde.

Fritz Wittels (1880-1950) was a pioneering Viennese psychoanalyst, the first biographer of Freud (1924), and intermittently friend and rival of Freud himself, of Wilhelm Stekel, and of their famous satirical adversary, Karl Kraus. Towards the end of his life, while living and practising as an analyst in the United States, Wittels wrote a two-hundred page memoir of his early life and career in Vienna. The typescript memoirs, held in the archives of the Abraham Brill Library, New York, are published here for the first time, accompanied by a range of little-known illustrations. Incomplete in places, they have been deftly edited, contextualised and introduced by Edward Timms, whose many valuable explanatory notes include the identification of the 'child woman' of the title. In his memoirs Wittels writes frankly and vividly about the erotic sub-culture of fin-de-siecle Vienna and about early controversies within the Psychoanalytic Society. His picture of the interaction between the two is startingly original, and will appeal not only to historians of psychoanalysis, but to anyone interested in the Viennese cultural avant-garde. The erotic triangles in which Wittels, Kraus and Freud were involved are shown to have impinged directly on the activities of the famous Society. Freud himself plays a crucial role in the story, and the book as a whole is of exceptional importance for the origins of psychoanalysis. Edward Timms was Professor of German and Director of the Centre for German-Jewish Studies at the University of Sussex. Among his publications is 'Karl Kraus: Apocalyptic Satirist' (1986), and he is co-editor of 'Freud in Exile: Psychoanalysis and its Vicissitudes' (1988) and of 'Austrian Exodus: The Creative Achievements of Refugees from National Socialism' (1995).