SIGMUND FREUD’S AUTOBIOGRAPHY BETWEEN SELF-ANALYSIS AND FICTIONALIZATION
SIGMUND FREUD’S AUTOBIOGRAPHY BETWEEN SELF-ANALYSIS AND FICTIONALIZATION

Summary/Abstract: The aim of this article is to offer a new perspective on a highly debated, but insufficiently known subject: the relationship between the real person of the author and the persona reflected in their work. Even more than in the case of a work of fiction, this relationship is interesting to be analyzed in an autobiography, whose readers are not willing to sign the fictional pact, as they expect to find out the truth about the protagonist’s identity. Nevertheless, Sigmund Freud’s Autobiography, published in 1925 and reviewed and completed in 1935, hardly refers to the real person behind the name on its cover. Instead of providing information on the life of the ”father” of psychoanalysis, it focuses on the evolution of this discipline, which its founder identifies with. Therefore, it is not a proper autobiography, but the ”biography” of a science, whose author only creates for himself a fictionalized image, an Other onto which he projects his own ideals.

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