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Fascinating History of Mental Health Care in Europe

The first 20% o this book is riveting. The opening is set in 1942 Germany and Freud’s four sisters are caught up in the Nazi plan to hunt down, inter, torture, and kill millions of Jews and others. Sigmund Freud and his immediate family have already fled Germany for the safety of England. The story focuses on Freud’s youngest sister Adolfina. She and Freud, as the first and last born children in their family, had been especially close as children and then again as young adults. Then, in their early careers, things began to go very right for Sigmund and very wrong for Adolfina. This widens the breach between them.

“Freud’s Sister� is mostly about Adolfina but the most interesting parts are about the interface between she and Sigmund and the specifics of how their relationship and other factors in their upbringing informed his theories. The historical parts that relate to late 19th century Germany and specifically the history of the care of the mentally ill are top rate. The writing is inspiring, informing, evocative. Where things fell apart for me was the philosophizing. It went on for pages in a dreamlike way. While it didn’t exactly feel preachy it bordered on pedantic. It definitely didn’t progress the story line however. Based on the excellent beginning and the subject matter itself, not to mention the laudatory European reviews, I expected to love “Freud’s Sister�. I didn’t. I made it through about 70% of the book but couldn’t force myself to finish.