On the 80th Anniversary of the Death of our Father among the Saints Sigmund of Vienna

Today, eighty years ago in London, Freud did in fact "die in freedom" as he said he would when he left Vienna 18 months earlier after the Nazis (who would later murder his remaining family) made it impossible for him to remain. Thanks to Ernest Jones, Marie Bonaparte, and the British and other governments, Freud and his household were able (after liquidating most assets for "exit visas") to settle in the British capital. There in his last year he finally found the battle against the cancer of the jaw, first diagnosed in 1923 and resulting in many surgeries and other painful procedures, too hard to continue fighting against, and so at his request his physician gave him very large doses of morphine which hastened the end.

I have two essays coming out in the coming weeks, one shorter and more personal about how Freud and analytic therapy were hugely helpful in my life; the second a long intellectual-historical piece looking at the reception of Freud and practice of analysis among Catholics and Jesuits in particular. I'll post links when those are published.

In the meantime on this anniversary, I refer you to Mark Edmundson's book about Freud's last days, and some of the other works on mourning and death discussed here.