Freud and the Émigré

This book reconsiders standard narratives regarding Austrian émigrés and exiles to Britain by addressing the seminal role of Sigmund Freud and his writings, and the critical part played by his contemporaries, in the construction of a method promoting humanized relations between individual and society and subjectivity and culture. This anthology presents groundbreaking examples of the manners in which well-known personalities including psychoanalysts Anna Freud and Ernst Kris, sociologist Marie Jahoda, authors Stefan Zweig and Hilde Spiel, film director Berthold Viertel, architect Ernst Freud, and artist Oskar Kokoschka, achieved a greater impact, and contributed to the broadening of British and global cultures, through constructing a psychologically effective language and activating their émigré networks. They advanced a visionary Viennese tradition through political and social engagements and through promoting humanistic perspectives in their scientific, educational and artistic works.

Elana Shapira is Lecturer in Design History and Theory at the University of Applied Arts Vienna, Austria, and a cultural and design historian. She is the project leader of the Austrian Science Fund research project Visionary Vienna: Design and Society 1918-1934 (2017-2021). Daniela Finzi is Lecturer in the complementary curriculum in Cultural Studies at the University of Vienna, Austria, and a literature and cultural historian. She has been scientific director and board member of the Sigmund Freud Privatstiftung since 2016.