Analysis and Exile

Boyhood, Loss, and the Lessons of Anna Freud

Vivian Heller
Karnac Books
288 pages
ISBN: 9781913494360
January 2022

This is the story of the childhood and youth of Peter Heller, one of the first children to be psychoanalyzed by Anna Freud and one of the 20 students invited to attend her experimental school in 1920s Vienna. While Anna Freud tries to teach him how to overcome his fears, Peter's native Vienna slides into Fascist barbarism and he is forced to navigate an increasingly dangerous world. To tell this story, Vivian Heller draws on a wealth of primary sources, including her father's case history and his internment diary, using novelistic techniques to bring the past alive.