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Sophie Freud

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Educator

The Resume

    (August 6, 1924-June 3, 2022)
    Born in Vienna, Austria
    Birth name was Miriam Sophie Freud
    Granddaughter of Sigmund Freud
    Social worker and teacher
    Wrote 'Living in the Shadow of the Freud Family' (2007)
    Criticized several of her grandfather's psychoanalytic theories, including penis envy, the Oedipal complex, and the distinction between vaginal and clitoral orgasms

Why she might be annoying:

    She said she majored in psychology because she thought it would be easy, which was important since she was not yet very fluent in English.
    She became estranged from her brother Walter after she criticized Sigmund.
    She divorced Paul Lowenstein after forty years because 'I could not imagine becoming old with a man at my side.'
    During a trip to Britain, she was surprised to find that Clement and Lucien Freud were famous, saying she had thought of them as 'cousins who I don't see.'
    Late in life, she would demand that interviewers not ask about her grandfather: 'It's become so boring to talk about him.'

Why she might not be annoying:

    When the Nazis invaded France, she and her mother fled on bicycle from Paris to Nice, eventually making their way to the US via Casablanca and Lisbon.
    She said living a long and successful life was her way of cheating Hitler.
    She was named educator of the year by the National Association of Social Workers (1981).
    To avoid wasting time looking for a parking space, she rode a motor scooter to the Simmons University campus into her 70s.
    She said about Sigmund Freud, 'His thoughts were damaging to women, and he should be called on that.'

Credit: C. Fishel


Featured in the following Annoying Collections:

Year In Review:

    In 2023, Out of 5 Votes: 80.0% Annoying
    In 2022, Out of 136 Votes: 52.94% Annoying