Emanuel, Philipp, and Sigmund in Manchester and London

Book presentation of "Freud’s British Family: Reclaiming Lost Lives in Manchester and London" with Roger Willoughby and Christfried Tögel, 13.03.2025

Drawing on his recent groundbreaking book, Freud’s British Family: Reclaiming Lost Lives in Manchester and London (Routledge, 2024), Roger Willoughby in this evening’s lecture reveals aspects of the complex relationships Manchester businessmen Emanuel and Philip Freud had with their much younger brother Sigmund. In doing so, the brothers’ lives are for the first time traced from the splintering of the family in Freiberg in 1859 amidst economic ignominy through their occasional in-person reunions in Continental Europe and notably in Britain in 1875 and 1908, as well as through their sustained correspondence. Mutually supportive, at times idealising, and sometimes strained, these sibling relationships impacted on the mental economy of the founder of psychoanalysis, not only through bolstering his confidence, but also in helping shape Freud’s thinking on topics from physiognomy, character, and art, to the Oedipus complex. Perhaps no less importantly, Emanuel and Philipp would offer Freud a model of business grit and stamina that helped fashion his own work ethic in his own small business as a private practitioner. Concluding with a brief consideration of Freud’s final 15 months in London after he left Nazi Vienna as a refugee, Roger Willoughby offers reflections on the impact of these arresting and important new readings of Freud for clinicians.


Roger Willoughby is a clinical psychologist, historian of psychoanalysis, academic, and writer. He is Fellow of both the Royal Historical Society and the Royal Society of Arts and holds doctorates in psychoanalytic studies from the University of Kent and the University of Oxford. His previous writings include the critically acclaimed Masud Khan: The Myth and the Reality (Free Association Books, 2005), as well as papers in the International Journal of Psychoanalysis, the British Journal of Psychotherapy, and elsewhere. He is a co-founder and editor of historiesofpsychoanalysis.com.


Christfried Tögel is a historian of science and is one of the foremost historians of psychoanalysis today. He is a former director of the SALUS-Institut for Evaluation and Simulation of Mental Health Care and of the Sigmund-Freud-Center in Germany. The author of more than 200 publications, including the recent Sigmund Freud 1856-1939: A Biographical Compendium (Routledge, 2024), Professor Tögel is editor of the Sigmund Freud Gesamtausgabe, the first complete Freud edition in 23 volumes.