ABSTRACT
Edoardo Weiss, for all the independence of his later position in the States, was naturally worried when the author knew him about what others had made of Sigmund Freud’s willingness to write such a dedication to Mussolini. As the socio-political upheavals in the late 1930s grew worse, and psychoanalysis got threatened both in Italy and in Vienna itself, Freud wrote that he was relying on the influence that he alleged that Weiss, as well as others, had. Mythmaking about Freud has been abetted by the credulity of his followers, which in turn has been promoted by the unnecessary secrecy about documents. For Freud to have refused such a dedication would have hurt Weiss’s position in Italy. Freud had chosen to write something gracious about what Mussolini had done for excavating and reconstructing archeological sites in Italy from the Roman past: “Benito Mussolini with the respectful greetings of an old man who recognizes in the ruler the cultural hero.”.
