Glossary
Archetype: An inherited idea or mode of thought in the psychology of Carl Gustav Jung that is derived from the experience of the race and is present in the unconscious of the individual. (p. 70)
Attaché: Short for attaché case, which is a small, flat, rigid, rectangular case used for carrying documents. (p. 9)
Bergasse 19: The location of Freud’s office from 1891 until 1939 where he developed his theory of psychoanalysis, wrote books, and treated patients on the building's second floor. (p. 6)
Bourgeoisie: The middle class, typically with reference to its perceived materialistic values or conventional attitudes. (p. 70)
Brünnhilde: The wife of Gunther, who instigated the murder of Siegfried. In the Norse versions she is a Valkyrie whom Sigurd (the counterpart of Siegfried) wins by penetrating the wall of fire behind which she lies in an enchanted sleep. (p. 48)
Budapest: The capital of Hungary, it consists of two parts, Buda and Pest, which are situated on opposite sides of the river and connected by a series of bridges. (p. 3)
Burghölzli Asylum: A psychiatric asylum located in Zürich, Switzerland. Burghölzli entered the history of psychoanalysis as a result of the interest shown by Eugen Bleuler and his students (including Carl Gustav Jung) in Freud's theories and their possible application to the mental patients at the asylum. The Burghölzli served as a bridge between the dynamic approach taken by French psychiatry and the biological orientation of German psychiatry. After Jung's falling out with Freud, the clinic lost its importance as a center of psychoanalytic research and a vehicle for its dissemination. (p. 3)
Cataleptic: Affected by or characteristic of catalepsy, which is a medical condition characterized by a trance or seizure with a loss of sensation and consciousness accompanied by rigidity of the body. (p. 9)
Catatonic: Relating to or characterized by catatonia, which is abnormality of movement and behavior arising from a disturbed mental state (typically schizophrenia). It may involve repetitive or purposeless overactivity, or catalepsy, resistance to passive movement, and negativism. (p. 10)
Clark University: A research university founded in 1887 and located in Worcester, Massachusetts. (p. 70)
Clinical Assistant: Healthcare providers who assist medical professionals with patient management, basic diagnostic tests, and recordkeeping. (p. 56)
Complexes: A related group of repressed or partly repressed emotionally significant ideas which cause psychic conflict leading to abnormal mental states or behavior. (p. 69)
Consulting room: A room in which a doctor or other therapeutic practitioner examines patients. (p. 18)
David and Goliath: From the story in the Bible in which David, a young boy, kills Goliath, a giant, with a stone; used for describing a situation in which a small person or organization defeats a much larger one in a surprising way. (p. 81)
Day Room: A room (as in a hospital) equipped for relaxation and recreation. (p. 58)
Death instinct: Also known as “death drive,” the drive toward death and destruction, often expressed through behaviors such as aggression, repetition, compulsion, and self-destructiveness. Sabrina Spielrein first presented her death instinct hypothesis during her “On Transformation” lecture at the Vienna Psychoanalytic Society Conference in 1911. (p. 68)
Delirium: An acutely disturbed state of mind characterized by restlessness, illusions, and incoherence, occurring in intoxication, fever, and other disorders. (p. 10)
Din: A loud, unpleasant, and prolonged noise. (p. 16)
Dockhand: A person who loads and unloads ships at a seaport. (p. 4)
Effigy: An image or representation especially of a person. (p. 5)
Folly: Lack of good sense or normal prudence and foresight. (p. 43)
Franc: The basic monetary unit of Switzerland and several other countries (including France, Belgium, and Luxembourg until the introduction of the Euro), equal to 100 centimes. (p. 77)
Fraulein: A title or form of address for an unmarried German-speaking woman, especially a young woman. (p. 14)
Freud’s Wednesday Society: An informal group founded by Freud in 1902. Each meeting included the presentation of a paper or case history with discussion and a final summary by Freud. The group later became the Vienna Psychoanalytic Society. (p. 79)
Gentile: A person who is not Jewish. (p. 28)
Germanic: Relating to or denoting the branch of the Indo-European language family that includes English, German, Dutch, Frisian, and the Scandinavian languages. (p. 67)
Herr: A title or form of address used of or to a German-speaking man, corresponding to Mr and also used before a rank or occupation. (p. 40)
Id: The one of the three divisions of the psyche in psychoanalytic theory that is completely unconscious and is the source of psychic energy derived from instinctual needs and drives. (p. 68)
Impiety: A lack of respect, especially for God or religion (p. 72)
“In the Land of the Blind, the one-eyed man is king”: A proverb dating to 1500 and credited to Desiderius Erasmus's Adagia, it means that in a difficult situation someone with only a few skills is in a better position and more successful than those people who have none. The original Latin is “in regione caecorum rex est luscus.” (p. 5)
Institute Rousseau: A private school in Geneva, Switzerland. Founded in 1912, this new institution was given the name of Jean-Jacques Rousseau, to whom founder Édouard Claparède attributed the "Copernican reversal" of putting the child, rather than the teacher, at the center of the educational process. (p.103)
Keen: (of a smell, light, or sound) Penetrating; clear. (p. 11)
"Look a fright": To have a disheveled or grotesque appearance. (p. 90)
Malignancy: A cancerous growth. (p. 101)
Neurasthenic: A person with neurasthenia, which is an ill-defined medical condition characterized by lassitude, fatigue, headache, and irritability, associated chiefly with emotional disturbance. (p. 9)
Neurosis: A relatively mild mental illness that is not caused by organic disease, involving symptoms of stress (depression, anxiety, obsessive behavior, hypochondria) but not a radical loss of touch with reality. (p. 72)
Neurotic: Abnormally sensitive, obsessive, or anxious. (p. 8)
Odessa: A city southwestern Ukraine about 275 miles (443 km) south of Kyiv. (p. 3)
Oedipus: The son of Jocasta and of Laius, king of Thebes. Sigmund Freud named the Oedipus complex after this character. Oedipus complex refers to the complex of emotions aroused in a young child, typically around the age of four, by an unconscious sexual desire for the parent of the opposite sex and wish to exclude the parent of the same sex. The term was originally applied to boys, the equivalent in girls being called the Electra complex. (p. 28)
Oracle: A person (such as a priestess of ancient Greece) through whom a deity is believed to speak. (p. 27)
Orthodox: Conventional. (p. 85)
Paralytic: Relating to the loss of the ability to move (and sometimes to feel anything) in part or most of the body, typically as a result of illness, poison, or injury. (p. 8)
Patricide: The murder of one's own father. (p. 27)
Practitioner: A person actively engaged in an art, discipline, or profession, especially medicine. (p. 62)
Privyet: An informal way of saying “Hello” in Russian. (p. 29)
Psychoanalytic: Relating to or involving psychoanalysis, or the treatment of mental disorders by investigating the interaction of conscious and unconscious elements in the mind and bringing repressed fears and conflicts into the conscious mind by techniques such as dream interpretation and free association. (p.7)
Psychogalvanic: Pertaining to or involving electric changes in the body resulting from reactions to mental or emotional stimuli. (p. 68)
Psychotic hysteria: A dated name for a condition in which psychotic symptoms (e.g., hallucinations, delusions, and bizarre and sometimes violent behavior) appear suddenly in a person with histrionic personality disorder, usually in response to a stressful precipitating life event. Symptoms are of short duration, lasting two weeks or less, and there is a full return to the previous level of functioning. Currently, however, hysterical psychosis is not widely considered a distinct clinical entity. Also called dissociative psychosis. (p. 9)
Puritan: A person with censorious moral beliefs, especially about self-indulgence and sex. (p. 70)
Pyim: “Smoke” in Russian. (p. 37)
Renata: The name of Sabina’s eldest daughter with Russian Jewish physician Pavel Nahumovitch Sheftel, who was born in 1913. (p. 52)
Rostov: A city in northwestern Russia which lies along Lake Nero and the Moscow-Yaroslavl railway. (p. 3)
Schizophrenia: A long-term mental disorder of a type involving a breakdown in the relation between thought, emotion, and behavior, leading to faulty perception, inappropriate actions and feelings, withdrawal from reality and personal relationships into fantasy and delusion, and a sense of mental fragmentation. (p. 7)
Shadchen: A Jewish professional matchmaker or marriage broker. (p. 67)
Siegfried (character): The hero of the first part of the Nibelungenlied. A prince of the Netherlands, Siegfried obtains a hoard of treasure by killing the dragon Fafner. He marries Kriemhild, and helps Gunther to win Brünnhilde before being killed by Hagen. (p. 48)
Siegfried (opera): The third of the four operas in Wagner’s Ring cycle. It is the story of a hero, Siegfried, and how he grows into manhood to discover fear and love. Raised by the Nibelung Mime, Siegfried is young, innocent and cocky. With the help of a mysterious Wanderer (who is really Wotan in disguise), Siegfried finds the pieces of his father's sword, Notung, reforges them and uses the instrument to kill the dragon Fafner who guards the hoard of Nibelung gold that formerly belonged to the Rhinemaidens. As a result of his killing of Fafner, Siegfried comes into possession of Alberich's cursed ring. But, Siegfried faces his ultimate challenge when he follows a birdsong to find the sleeping Brünnhilde whom fate has destined Siegfried to awaken and fall in love with. At the end of the opera, Siegfried gives the Ring to Brünnhilde to prove and symbolize his oath of love and fidelity to her. (p. 47)
S.S. George Washington: An ocean liner built in 1908 for the Bremen-based North German Lloyd. When George Washington was launched in 1908, she was the largest German-built steamship and the third-largest ship in the world. George Washington was built to emphasize comfort over speed and was sumptuously appointed in her first-class passenger areas. The ship could carry a total of 2,900 passengers, and made her maiden voyage in January 1909 to New York. (p. 74)
Talking cure: A method of treating psychological disorders or emotional difficulties that involves talking to a therapist or counselor, in either individual or group sessions. (p. 7)
Thrall: The state of being in someone's power; captive. (p. 45)
Transference: A phenomenon in which an individual redirects emotions and feelings, often unconsciously, from one person to another. This process may occur in therapy, when a person receiving treatment applies feelings toward—or expectations of—another person onto the therapist and then begins to interact with the therapist as if the therapist were the other individual. Often, the patterns seen in transference will be representative of a relationship from childhood. The concept of transference was first described by psychoanalyst Sigmund Freud in his 1895 book Studies on Hysteria, where he noted the deep, intense, and often unconscious feelings that sometimes developed within the therapeutic relationships he established with those he was treating. (p. 44)
Typhoid: An infectious bacterial fever with an eruption of red spots on the chest and abdomen and severe intestinal irritation. (p. 10)
Vienna: The capital of Austria. Vienna produces more than half of Austria’s capital goods and almost half of its consumer goods. Special Viennese products are silk, velvet, linen, ceramics, jewelry, scientific and musical instruments, watches, cutlery, leather goods, furniture, paper, and carpets. (p. 3)
Vrach: “Doctor” in Russian. (p. 34)
Wilhelm Richard Wagner (May 22, 1813—February 13, 1883): A German dramatic composer and theorist whose operas and music had a revolutionary influence on the course of Western music, either by extension of his discoveries or reaction against them. Among his major works are The Flying Dutchman (1843), Tannhäuser (1845), Lohengrin (1850), Tristan und Isolde (1865), Parsifal (1882), and his great tetralogy, The Ring of the Nibelung (1869–76). (p. 44)
Worcester: A city in Western, MA. (p. 83)
Word Association: Free association in which a word serves as the stimulus object. (p. 19)
Wotan: Another name for Odin, who is the supreme god and creator, god of victory and the dead in Norse Mythology. (p. 48)
Zürich: The largest city of Switzerland and capital of the canton of Zürich. Located in an Alpine setting at the northwestern end of Lake Zürich, this financial, cultural, and industrial center stretches out between two forested chains of hills, about 40 miles (60 km) from the northern foothills of the Alps. Two rivers, the Limmat and Sihl, run through the city. (p. 3)