Hilda and Freud

Collected Words

This play is based on Hilda Doolittles Tribute to Freud, the letters she exchanged with Freud and her literary circle, as well as some of her poetry. Hilda, a forty-seven year old poet, met Freud, who was then in his late seventies, in 1930s Vienna. It was the beginning of a startling "love affair", with exchanges of gifts, letters and flowers, both within and beyond the psychoanalytical setting. During the play, the public and the reader accompany Hilda on her visit to Freuds residence, shortly after his death in London, guided by the Narrator on this tour around the house as through the chambers of her mind. In this visit Hilda revives moments of her life and analysis, which she defined as a "free verse relationship" with Freud. In a psychoanalytical, non-conventional, treatment, she works through her war traumas as well as her illuminating cosmic and oceanic epiphanies.