1. What did you hope to achieve for readers by writing Analysis and Exile?

I wanted to recreate the world that my father grew up in, which was also the world that he lost. I wanted to convey the idealism at the heart of the psychoanalytic experiment at that time, which was in such contrast to the anti-Semitism that was on the rise. I wanted to show the impact of these forces on the life of my father, a Jewish boy who was growing up without his mother, protected in some ways, abandoned in others, and eventually thrown into exile.

2. What might readers learn about Anna Freud and the beginnings of child psychoanalysis?

They’ll learn what a tremendous impact Anna Freud had on one of her first child patients, not only replacing the mother he had lost, but also initiating him into ways of thinking about himself that he could never have arrived at on his own. The question of whether children like my father were initiated into self-reflection too early will inevitably come up, but there isn’t any easy answer to it.

Readers will learn about the school that Anna helped to create in Vienna, an experiment in education that afforded child patients like my father with a close-knit community. The project-based education that was favored by Anna and her colleagues is familiar to us now, but it was radical for its time, and it was formative for the children who went there. In this book, readers will learn how Anna Freud appeared through the eyes of a very young boy, who alternately loved, idolized and rebelled against her, and how she came back into his life in later years.

3. How did you feel about the responsibility of writing Peter Heller’s story?  

In reconstructing my father’s childhood, I am inviting the reader to imagine what it was like to be raised in psychoanalysis, when child psychoanalysis was just beginning. I want the reader to see this process through the eyes, not of the analyst, but of the child. To make this happen, I take a novelistic approach to the central characters and events of my father’s early life, drawing on the rich materials my father left in my hands: his case history; interviews with his schoolmates and teachers; unpublished diaries and correspondence involving crucial figures of the Vienna school, including the Freuds, the Burlinghams, and Erik Erikson.

In later chapters, I try to show how my father’s humanistic upbringing in psychoanalysis, with its goal of helping him to become a whole human being, was tested in a fragmented world. For this part of the book, I draw on his unpublished internment diary. I feel that it’s important to share this story.

4. Analysis and Exile is your third book. What advice would you give to first time authors?

The other day I went to a show of the art of James Castle, a self-taught artist who made wonderful drawings using spit and ash. He kept his work in bundles tied in string which he hid in various corners of his family’s house. Wrapped in bits of paper or cardboard that he had saved, these bundles were moving to see. There was a tenderness there, a belief that his work had a life of its own. Think of your writing as a living thing that needs to be protected in order to grow. Once you’ve got it to stand on its own feet, pay attention to where it tells you to go.