Tribute to Freud

Resumen del libro

A classic of American literature, now with a new introduction by iconic author and psychotherapist Adam Phillips.

-My bat-like thought-wings would beat painfully in that sudden searchlight,- H.D. writes in Tribute to Freud, her moving memoir. Compelled by historical as well as personal crises, H.D. underwent therapy with Freud during 1933-34, as the streets of Vienna were littered with tokens dropped like confetti on the city stating -Hitler gives work,- -Hitler gives bread.- Having endured World War I, she was now gathering her resources to face the cataclysm she knew was approaching. The first part of the book, -Writing on the Wall,- was composed some ten years after H.D. stay in Vienna; the second part, -Advent,- is a journal she kept during her analysis. Revealed here in the poet crystal shard-like words and in Freud own letters (which comprise an appendix) is a remarkably tender and human portrait of the legendary Doctor in the twilight of his life. Time double backs on itself, mingling past, present, and future in a visionary weave of dream, memory, and reflections.

Adam Phillips, whom John Banville called -one of the finest prose stylists in the language, an Emerson of our time,- was born in 1954 in Cardiff, Wales. A child psychotherapist, he is the author of On Balance and The Beast in the Nursery. H.D. (1886-1961) (the pen name of Hilda Doolittle) was born in the Moravian community of Bethlehem, PA in 1886. A major twentieth century poet with -an ear more subtle than Pound, Moore, or Yeats- as Marie Ponsot writes, she was the author of several volumes of poetry, fiction, essays, and memoirs. She is perhaps one of the best-known and prolific women poets of the Modernist era. Bryher Ellerman was a novelist and H.D. wealthy companion. She financed H.D. therapy with Freud.

-A warm and revealing portrait of H.D. mentor and friend.- - Philadelphia Inquirer

-The book, with its appropriate title, is surely the most delightful and precious appreciation of Freud personality ever likely to be written. Only a fine creative artist could have written it-I can only say that I envy anyone who has not read it, and that it will live as the most enchanting ornament of all the Freudian biographical literature.-- - Ernest Jones, Author of The Life and Work of Sigmund Freud