Summary

In the late 1930s, Freud was forced to leave Vienna with his wife Martha and daughter Anna. They moved to Maresfield Gardens in London. In the late 1800s, Freud distracted himself from his grief over his father’s death by devoting himself to his work. Picturing him this way reminds the narrator of her grandmother. She recalls Doctor K asking her about her dreams as a child.

Doctor K spent Christmas with the narrator and her mother. While her mother cooked, the narrator tried enacting the “furious good cheer” she had learned from books (106). She wished Doctor K “would stop working” so they could celebrate (107). She now realizes how hidden she was from herself, a feeling she guesses Freud also experienced “as his children played” in the shadow of his work (107).

After the narrator’s father left, Doctor K tried...