Girl in a Freudian Slip: A Memoir

Novelist Frances Oliver's parents, Richard and Edith Sterba, were pioneer Viennese psychoanalysts who trained with Sigmund and Anna Freud. When the Nazis occupied Austria the Sterba family fled and eventually settled in the American Middle West, where Richard continued to practice his beloved violin and both parents to practice Freudian theory on their daughters as well as their patients. The Sterbas were successful but never became part of the society around them, where their behaviour seemed as bizarre as their theories radical. Frances, their older daughter, tried in vain to bridge the gap between the nostalgic Viennese oasis of her home and the world outside. This is a funny, frank but affectionate memoir of a colourful eccentric childhood in a vanished age.