Hermine Hug-Hellmuth was an extremely gifted and intelligent woman, with a poetic mind that had been influenced by the German Romantic Movement. Her untimely murder at the age of fifty-four by her illegitimately born nephew Rolph has cast a shadow over her reputation. Her original contribution to understanding the mind of the child, her fine appreciation of the psychological suffering of the illegitimate child, and her challenge to Freud’s theory about female sexuality has been largely ignored in order to save the reputation of the history of psychoanalysis.
Her murder needs to be understood against the backdrop of the many tragedies she suffered. She lost her mother, Ludovika, when she was twelve, and her father, Hugo, deceived her over her illegitimately born half-sister Antonia. Hermine felt deeply unloved and could never trust anyone to get close to her. When Antonia died, leaving behind her nine-year-old illegitimately born son Rolph, Hermine was faced again with the stigma of illegitimacy and her father’s lie about Antonia. She was further humiliated by Antonia’s stipulation in her will that Rolph was not to be cared for by Hermine. The sisters had fallen out over Hermine’s analysis with self-styled psychoanalyst Isidor Sadger, who disliked Antonia, and Hermine publishing extensive observations about Rolph and his sexual behaviour. Rolph was a troubled child and his disrupted upbringing after his mother’s death was compounded by Hermine’s ambivalent behaviour towards him. In the end, her father’s lie, Antonia’s will, and the behaviour of her delinquent nephew rebounded upon her and the intergenerational trauma achieved its nemesis in her murder.
Prophecy Coles brings new insights to the life of the first child psychoanalyst. She reveals Hug-Hellmuth to be a woman before her time in her profound understanding of children, women’s sexuality and desires, the impact of a mother’s state of mind upon inter-uterine life, and the concept of “motherese”, the universal pre-verbal language of mothers and their newborn babies. Coles exposes Hug-Hellmuth’s genius, her flaws, and her inadequate care of her troubled nephew to create a rounded picture of a brilliant woman trying to find her own path while struggling with her own demons and the constraints of the time.
Françoise Davoine, retired faculty at EHESS: L’École des hautes études en sciences sociales, Paris; psychoanalyst –
‘Prophecy Coles has written a breathtaking book telling the silenced story of Hermine Hug-Hellmuth, a major child analyst who was murdered by her nephew. She does justice to a woman who was erased from history at the very start of psychoanalysis. By weaving artfully Hermine’s biography with history at the turn of the twentieth century, and with her personal involvement, Prophecy Coles takes the reader into a dialogue with her psychoanalytic research, which is also mine, at the crossroads of a singular story, that of a woman and the turmoil of history.’
Rosemary H. Balsam, MD, Yale University Medical School; Training and Supervising Analyst, Western New England Institute of Psychoanalysis; author of Women’s Bodies in Psychoanalysis; Sigourney Award winner 2018 –
‘Indeed the “forgotten” analyst, but her creativity is alive with us every day in psychoanalysis because of her novel introduction of toys into therapy with children. The rich and tragic life of Hermine Hug-Hellmuth is exquisitely, imaginatively, and sensitively restored here, to her proper place as a distinguished foremother of our discipline. Her web of family secrets, encounters with illegitimacy, shame, and scandal within the aristocratic ambiance of Europe of the early twentieth century, the political upheavals and “the febrile atmosphere of fin de siècle Vienna” surrounds the life, progressive education, work, and murder of Hermine. Freud was very admiring of her talents. Like so many, she has written her psychological puzzles into her analytic work, for example, her fascinating 1921 A Young Girl’s Diary. And Prophecy Coles perceptively helps to unravel it. The result is a unique scholarly page turner. A must-read for everyone in our profession, and of interest to general readers.’
Dr Christopher Turner, author of Adventures in the Orgasmatron: Wilhelm Reich and the Invention of Sex –
‘Prophecy Coles skilfully pieces together the lost life of Hermine Hug-Hellmuth, the first child analyst and gentile to join the Vienna Psychoanalytic Association and, through a close reading of her work, writes something of a detective story that reveals new facts about her murder by a nephew who felt himself a victim of psychoanalysis. Hug-Hellmuth’s untimely death is interpreted as a symbol of the imploding Habsburg Empire, which serves as a dazzling backdrop to Coles’ intriguing portrait of a groundbreaking analyst and feminist whose life was defined by a lie.’
Michael Parsons, British Psychoanalytical Society –
‘This is a fascinating and valuable book. Hermine Hug-Hellmuth was one of the earliest women psychoanalysts, and a pioneer of child analysis and play therapy with children, but she has been largely forgotten. Prophecy Coles brings her vividly back into view, weaving together her significant theoretical contributions and her complicated personal life. Especially valuable is the way the book relates Hug-Hellmuth’s story to the early history of psychoanalysis, and to the tensions in late nineteenth-century Vienna between liberal and repressive views of childhood. What comes through, above all, is the concern that Hug-Hellmuth in the 1920s and Coles in the 2020s share for the welfare of children.’