ABSTRACT
Freud was “emotionally blind” in his analysis of his daughter Anna. Freud’s desire to analyze his daughter had inherent limitations. When a family member is this analyst’s analysand, the limitations for a meaningful analysis are attenuated. How is it possible for Freud to analyze Anna’s Oedipal complex, which would mean he would be exploring his daughter’s sexual feelings towards him with her? Every child should be granted the emotional privilege to maintain the privacy of having their so-called Oedipal feelings without sharing them with their parents. Such privacy maintains the unconscious space for such feelings and thoughts of the individual to be experienced and worked on and through in a safe psychological space. Freud’s severe criticism of Ferenczi’s clinical behavior for alleged, and unfounded sexual behavior, indicated Freud’s problem with sexuality. He was actually “emotionally blind” to what can be considered sexually seductive behavior in analyzing his daughter. If we use Freud’s definitions of a successful analysis, Anna did not have a heterosexual relationship or become part of a traditional marriage, which was Freud’s standard for heterosexual primacy. Freud analyzing his daughter, while arranged with the best of intentions, can be considered to have traumatic issues for her. He neglected the traumatic aspects of the analysis because he had dissociated his own childhood sexual abuse with a nursemaid. This meant Freud did not integrate sexual trauma as an experience in his own thinking and feelings. Freud neglected and suppressed Ferenczi’s Confusion of Tongues theory because of his own unanalyzed childhood sexual trauma.
