Freud's Sixth Case History

For brief periods in 1933 and 1934, Sigmund Freud analyzed the American poet H.D. in Vienna. At the time of the analysis Freud was 77 and H.D. was 47. She was an established poet, living in London, part of a new movement in poetry dating from 1912, defined by her friend and first love, Ezra Pound, as “Imagism.”

A brief example of one of Pound's famous “imagist” poems is the haikulike “In the Station of the Metro”:

The apparition of these faces in the crowd: Petals on a wet, black bough

H.D. wrote similarly in the first stanza of her poem “Sea Rose” from 1916 but with significant differences to the psychoanalyst's eye and ear. This is not just an objective description of a rose in accord with Pound's dictate.

Rose, harsh rose, Married with the stint of petals Meager flower, thin Sparse leaf

H.D.'s evolution as a poet and the nature and fate of her poetry is beyond the scope of this brief essay. My focus here is her analysis with Freud.

H.D. went to Freud with the encouragement of her “companion,” Annie Winifred Ellerman (who changed her name to Bryher), who also paid for the analysis. H.D. was anxious, depressed, and in a fallow period of her writing. Her first experience of analysis with Freud ended after only 3 months, as a result of a bomb planted by Nazi sympathizers in front of her trolley. The bomb was removed from the tracks before it exploded but H.D. was too frightened to stay in Vienna.

The Nazi threat hung over the analysis from the beginning. A Nazi “Death Head” symbol was chalked on the sidewalk in front of Freud's office/apartment. H.D. worried about the possible threat to Freud and his family. There was even a point in the analysis where Freud mentioned his worry about his grandchildren and broke off crying, by H.D.'s account. Although she had her own serious war fears (Friedman, 2002, p. 343), she held back from telling Freud more about her concern for his welfare (Friedman, 2002, p. 292).

When Freud's daughter, Anna, underwent a long aftern