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PARTISAN REVIEW
man, and the one that shows dancing and being generous like
Mathilde . One would like to be able to do both, and does find
oneself to be a little of both, but neither becomes real.
Anna Freud continued with a statement that shows how deeply she–
like her father - associated public or professional achievement with
masculinity and how much her conscious desire lay in the other
direction, toward what she associated with femininity:
I feel like I carry a double load now, and it is especially so
because I am required to do a man's tasks in the Vienna Society,
in its training program, in negotiations, in complicated situa–
tions, even in making money (for the moment) . I am pleased to
be acquiring a degree of independence in the eyes of other people
(not before Papa); but otherwise I would prefer to give and to
serve than to acquire and to demand . . . And once in my life I
would like to be allowed to be like your Mathilde. Only it is most
likely too late for that, as one does not become like her, one just
is like her.
Anna Freud had been practicing as an analyst of children and
adults for nearly three years - the three exhausting first years of her
father's illness - when she reluctantly slipped into one of her letters
to
Max
Eitingon a discouraged, depressed remark:
But I think that precisely the great involvement with the children
is responsible for the fact that much that should give me peace
does not. I could say many things about this, and so it is better,
once again, that I not get started. But one more thing anyway: I
run across the fact that I do not succeed in doing something to or
for others without also immediately wanting to have something
for myself (and not just money, which is still supposedly the
easiest thing to get). In the long run, however, this is a stupid
way to live.
She was signaling to the friend she had previously charged with
"overgoodness" that her own struggle on that front was not finished.
She was grateful to Eitingon for his thoughtfulness: "1 thank
you very much for everything that you wrote as an answer to that
one sentence in my letter. But that which 1 complained about in
myself is, unfortunately, some layers deeper than you imagine, and
still farther away from Papa's secure independence. Because how
