Sophie Freud Speaks in ΦBK Lecture Series in Boston, April 23
Sophie Freud, professor emeritus of social work at Simmons College and grand-
daughter of Sigmund Freud.
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“He was not a warm and fuzzy grandfather,” Sophie Freud recalls. “It wasn’t in the culture.” But by this time in his life, her famous grandfather, Sigmund Freud, was suffering with cancer of the mouth, and every word was used in economy. Of her escape from the Nazis, she says, “It was a strange adventure.” It led her and her mother, Esti, to France in 1938, after the annexation of Austria. When the Germans took Paris in 1940, mother and daughter fled to Casablanca, and from there to New York.
Twenty years after her mother’s death, Sophie Freud’s memoir, Living in the Shadow of the Freud Family (Greenwood, 2007), interweaves personal remembrances and family stories with a chronicle of historical events, creating a fascinating window into the dynamics of her famous family.
On Thursday evening, April 23, ΦBK members in the Boston area will have an opportunity to learn more about the Freud family from Sophie Freud as part of the Phi Beta Kappa Lecture Series.
Freud’s discussion of her most recent family memoir will begin at 7:00 p.m. in the Stata Center on the MIT campus. A reception with lighthors d'oeuvres will follow.
To register for the lecture and purchase tickets, click here.
Members attending the lecture will have an opportunity to join the ΦBK Association of Boston during onsite registration. To learn more about our associations, click here.
The Phi Beta Kappa Lecture Series was established by the national office of the Society in order to provide members with greater opportunities for intellectual fellowship and to allow the Society to return to its historic role of participation in larger, national dialogue about the important issues of our time. The current lecture was organized by the Society’s national office in conjunction with the ΦBK Association of Boston and the ΦBK chapter at MIT.
Sophie Freud is professor emeritus of social work at Simmons College and book review editor for the American Journal of Psychotherapy. Her previous book about her family, My Three Mothers and Other Passions (New York University Press, 1988), examines her complicated relationship with her mother, her maternal aunt, and her aunt Anna Freud, the youngest daughter of Sigmund Freud.
For more information about this event and up-coming lectures in the series, write to lecture@pbk.org.