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George MacLean and Ulrich Rappen have provided child psychoanalysts and historians of psychoanalysis a volume that is rich, rewarding, and unusually illuminating. Hermine Hug-Hellmuth was one of the first lay analysts, the first gentile and third woman member of the Vienna Psychoanalytic Society, and, most notably, the first child psychoanalyst. Why has her work been all but forgotten? MacLean and Rappen attempt to address this question in their volume.
Hug-Hellmuth's life from beginning to end was full of traumas— from her separation-filled childhood until her murder in 1924 by her nephew, Rolf, the illegitimate son of her illegitimate half-sister. Her professional career was marred by the notoriety of her A Young Girl's Diary. Hug-Hellmuth eventually said that she was the editor of this anonymous adolescent girl's description of her inner life. Some maintained, however, that Hug-Hellmuth's claim of authenticity was fraudulent and that the editor herself was the author of the diary. Her chief critic was the English psychologist, Cyril Burt. MacLean and Rappen agree with Burt's hypothesis that the diary was written by “an exceptional person who did not live under average conditions,” i.e., Hug-Hellmuth herself. They hypothesize that Hug-Hellmuth's motives for writing the diary may have included a wish to counteract the appearance of a rival for Freud's approbation, Anna Freud.
MacLean and Rappen have organized the volume with biographical material (which, in fact, is quite sparse in comparison to other noted psychoanalysts), critical discussion of her analytic work, and selected papers on child analysis, women, and the family. On first reading I found the book difficult, to some extent because of sloppy editing. One example is the heading of Chapter 3: “A Psychoanalytic Career: 1913-1929,” rather than 1924 (the year of her death).