The Wolf Man's Russia

Freud's fascination with Russia is well-documented by many researchers. “My imagination is still living in Russian history” he writes in a letter to his fiancée (1885, p. 141). Within the Russian Empire, the large seaport city of Odessa, where many Jews and Russians prospered in the 19^th century, held a special and more personal place for Freud.

His mother Amelia Nathansohn and two of her brothers grew up in Odessa. His father travelled to Odessa on business. His paternal uncle Josef was imprisoned in Austria for trading in counterfeit rubles on the Romanian-Russian border near Odessa. Freud's famous patient, Sergei Pankejeff, or the Wolf Man, was a wealthy Russian Orthodox Christian from Odessa. The Pankejeff family were rich merchants, patrons of many talented artists and physicians in Odessa. They opened their houses and offered jobs to prominent painters, such as Golovkov and Kuznetsov, supported city orphanages and publishing houses, fought for local and national political causes, founded and sponsored the Odessa psychiatric clinic, and profoundly affected the lives of many residents. Yet their name does not show up anywhere on Odessa's map. This absence acutely reflects political and personal calamities of the 20^th century. This paper points out the Wolf Man's traces in modern Odessa, highlighting some buildings, artifacts, and archival materials recently uncovered by Ukrainian historians. I specifically would like to acknowledge the following publications: Sergei Lushchik's book Odessa Realities of the Wolf Man (Lushchik, 2003), Volodymyr Kudlach's catalog of Gerasim Golovkov's works (Kudlach, 2015), and Oleg Gubar's article about the discovery of Anna Pankejeff's poems (Gubar, 2014). Some photographs included in this publication were generously shared with me by Sergey Kotelko, an Odessa historian. Very thorough research about these authors came after nearly a century of Soviet neglect of psychoanalysis and its historical oblivion. The Wolf Man became