ABSTRACT
When he was in his late 60s, Sigmund Freud thought that he had come to the end of his life. He had just been diagnosed with a recurrence of cancer, and he decided to write his last paper. It was an account of his life, interweaving personal history with the history of psychoanalysis, and he titled it An Autobiographical Study (1935/1952). His ambivalence about the self-disclosure involved in writing an autobiography came through. For instance, at the end of the piece he wrote,
And here I may be allowed to break off these autobiographical notes. The public has no claim to learn any more of my personal affairs—of my struggles, my disappointments, and my successes. I have in any case been more open and frank in some of my writings (such as The Interpretation of Dreams and The Psychopathology of Everyday Life) than people usually are who describe their lives for their contemporaries or for posterity. I have had small thanks for it, and from my experience I cannot recommend anyone to follow my example. (pp. 83–84)
