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The Forgotten Analyst: Hermine Hug-Hellmuth (1871–1924)

Author(s) : Prophecy Coles

Reviews and Endorsements

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.
Françoise Davoine, retired faculty at EHESS: L'École des hautes études en sciences sociales, Paris; psychoanalyst

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.
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

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.
Dr Christopher Turner, author of Adventures in the Orgasmatron: Wilhelm Reich and the Invention of Sex

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.
Michael Parsons, British Psychoanalytical Society