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Within a short period of time, several authors have written excellent biographies of the most notable pioneers in the history of psychoanalysis. These have included the benchmark, scholarly biography of Freud by Peter Gay (1988). Many others have been published, Roazen's (1985) biography of Helene Deutch, Grosskurth's (1986) biography of Melanie Klein, Quinn's (1987) biography of Karen Horney, and Young-Bruehl's (1988) biography of Anna Freud. It is of interest to see a book published about the more enigmatic, less known pioneer of child psychoanalysis, Hermine Hug-Hellmuth.
Even the title of the book arouses some interest, as it avoids stating exactly what the book is about, leaving the author with an open field. Is it a biography of the first practicing child psychoanalyst? Perhaps it is more specifically the description of a criminal case? Possibly it is even grander, an actual history of child psychoanalysis? If it were it would be the first ever published. Repeated reading left us dissatisfied. The book is neither a biography, nor the description of a case, nor a work of history. It is a curious mélange of fact, fiction, and fantasy.
Writing a biography is difficult. One problem is maintaining a proper literary and psychological distance from the subject of the biography. When one has invested years in research and writing to produce a book about a person, it is easy to idealize the subject of one's interest. Grosskurth (1986) idealizes Melanie Klein. Young-Bruehl (1988) exceeds Grosskurth by elevating Anna Freud to the level of being at least superhuman, at most supernatural. Gay (1988), Roazen (1985), and Quinn (1987) manage to maintain scholarship and distance, where the subjects of their biographies, respectively Sigmund Freud, Helene Deutsch and Karen Horney, remain human. In