Freud's 4pm Session: “What have they done to you, poor child?”

In 1897, on December 22nd, a compassionate pioneering psychoanalyst asked a close friend this question. It concerned a two-year-old girl who was brutally raped by her father and nearly died. This was 127 years ago. The psychoanalyst had even said his question could be the new motto for psychoanalysis. The man was Sigmund Freud, and he was writing to his friend Wilhelm Fliess.

Abuse by middle class, upper class or VIP adults has been unbearable for most professionals to consider in our own time, let alone over a century ago but Freud never gave up on the reality of child abuse even though he could not take it further. Somehow Freud is expected to have managed it. Why does he bear the major brunt of social anger towards therapists who turned a blind eye to abuse over the last century and what does this tell us about the nature of the subject and our relationship to Freud?

Speaker

Dr Valerie Sinason is a poet, writer, child psychotherapist and adult psychoanalyst. She is an Honorary Consultant Psychotherapist at the University of Cape Town Child Guidance Clinic, Chair of Trustees of the Friends of the Bushman Heritage Museum, New Bethesda South Africa and President of the Institute of Psychotherapy and Disability. Editor of Trauma Dissociation and Multiplicity and co-editor of Psychoanalytic Psychotherapy after Child abuse. She has published numerous articles and books, including two poetry collections. Valerie Sinason was awarded a Lifetime Achievement Award from the ISSTD (International Society for the Study of Trauma and Dissociation) in April 2016.

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The event will be held on the first floor of the Museum during regular opening hours. Unfortunately the Freud Museum does not have step-free access at this time. Advance booking is highly recommended as capacity is limited.

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