Sigmund Freud and his Patient Margarethe Csonka: A Case of Homosexuality in a Woman in Modern Vienna

Join us for this fascinating seminar with Professor Michal Shapira.

This talk historically analyzes one of Sigmund Freud’s least-studied cases, published in 1920 and dedicated to homosexuality in a young woman.Scholars of sexuality often focus on Freud’s writings on male homosexuality, disregarding his views on homosexual women. This talk serves as a corrective, introducing the case and historically exploring Freud’s attitudes towards lesbianism, radical among his medical colleagues in the early twentieth century. It also puts Margarethe Csonka, the patient, at its centre, while assessing her background life before and after the encounter. Moreover, the talk expands the case beyond the scientific-medical purview of the times. It follows the new opportunities afforded to women and Jews through growing equality and the modernization of urban life in 1920s Vienna and how these allowed Csonka to develop her identity. Csonka’s case would be placed within the broader context of medical and psychological texts, Freud’s own writings, Jewish and gender history, and modern Vienna’s urban and art history.

The Speaker

Professor Michal Shapira joined the History Department at Tel Aviv University in 2013. She previously taught at Barnard College, Columbia University as an ACLS-Mellon New Faculty Fellow and at Amherst College as a Visiting Assistant Professor. Her research and publications deal with the legacies of World War Two and the history of psychology in Britain, Europe and beyond. She focuses on total war, gender, and the development of expert culture in the twentieth century.

Shapira is the author of the book The War Inside: Psychoanalysis, Total War and the Making of the Democratic Self in Postwar Britain (Cambridge University Press, 2013; paperback 2015). The book was shortlisted for the Royal Historical Society Whitfield Prize and the Gradiva Book Award, National Association for the Advancement of Psychoanalysis.   

Her new book is titled A Case of Female Homosexuality in Modern Vienna: Sigmund Freud and his Patient Margarethe Csonka (Routledge, 2023). 

She is the recipient of the 2021 Prize for Best Article from the Society for the History of Psychology, American Psychological Association Journal History of Psychology. She received fellowships from the American Council of Learned Societies (ACLS), the Mellon Foundation, the Library of Congress, the American Psychoanalytic Association, the Israel Science Foundation (ISF), the Safra Center for Ethics, the Rutgers, Princeton, Tel Aviv and Cornell Universities and others.