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“In psychoanalysis details are often of supreme importance for conveying understanding and conviction.”
The British journal Psychoanalysis and History recently published a brief communication written by the late Dr. Lydia Marinelli (2009), the distinguished Austrian Freud scholar, about the actual tweed cap that Sigmund Freud wore during his flight from the Nazis. Marinelli reported that, after Freud's death, Anna Freud donated this item from her father's wardrobe to the Sigmund Freud Museum in Vienna, where it remained until 1977, when an American visitor stole the priceless headgear. Extraordinarily, some years later, the thief in question actually posted the cap back to the Berggasse, full of contrition, perhaps having had some psychoanalysis in the meanwhile!
Marinelli's little pièce d'occasion, though charming and evocative, also serves as a potent reminder that, for those of us interested in the life of the founder of psychoanalysis, no biographical detail seems too insignificant. In fact, we greatly enjoy reading stories about Freud's cap, fascinated with every single aspect of his life. Perhaps a genius deserves such detailed attention. Perhaps his life remains so inspirational that we owe it to Freud and to posterity to capture every piece of minutiae. Perhaps our preoccupation with Freud represents no more than a sublimation of our primordial wish to know the bodies of our archaic caretakers, “mummy” and “daddy.”
Whatever our motivation for researching Freud minutiae—however useful these vignettes may or may not be—they do continue to delight those of us who work within the psychoanalytic domain. So naturally, when the late Professor Margaret