Sophie Freud
Psychologist
BORN AUGUST 6, 1924 - DIED JUNE 3, 2022, AGED 97
SOPHIE Freud was the last granddaughter of the eminent psychoanalyst Sigmund Freud but in her work as a social worker she disagreed with many of his theories.
In fact she famously once dismissed psychoanalysis as “narcissistic indulgence” and said her grandfather misunderstood women in particular.
She told an interviewer 23 years ago: “For him, man was the norm and woman was some other strange abnormality.”
Freud was a professor of social work at Simmons University in Boston, in America, where she argued that mental development was down to sociological factors, such as whether you had a privileged childhood or grew up in a poor neighbourhood.
Born in Vienna, her lawyer father Martin was Sigmund Freud’s eldest
son. Her mother Ernestine was a narcissist who became obsessed with her looks.
Her parents argued constantly and she also fought with her elder brother, Walter. The family split up when Germany annexed Austria in 1938.
Sophie and her mother moved to Paris, then Casablanca and finally New York. Other members of the family travelled to London. In 1945 she married engineer Paul Loewenstein and worked at psychiatric hospitals.
However, she was drawn back to academia and became the head of human behaviour at Simmons University.
She wrote several books about her life, the first called Living In The Shadow Of The Freud Family. She dismissed her grandfather as a “false prophet”.
She is survived by two daughters and a son from her marriage to Paul Loewenstein. They were divorced in 1986.