SOURCE: "Lou Andreas-Salomé," in The Hibbert Journal, Vol. 58, January, 1960, pp. 149-56.

In the following essay, Hobman offers an overview of Andreas-Salomé's life.

Lou Andreas-Salomé wanted love—the love of man and the love of God—and she took what she wanted. Throughout her whole being and throughout her whole life she was filled with an awareness of God. This RussoGerman woman writer, famous on the Continent but scarcely known in England, divided her autobiography [Lebensrückblick: Grundrißeioiger Lebenser innerungen, 1951] into separate parts, not in chronological order but according to her experiences; one of the last sections, about Sigmund Freud, is an account of her close friendship with him. She was his disciple, and her intuitive understanding of men and women was further enlarged by his discoveries concerning the psyche, but although she learned much from him, she never learned to explain away religious faith as an...