Book review of Francoise Giroud

Posted on August 30, 2016

• In: biographies/books | Book Review | women

Une histoire de femme libre

Loise, Loita, Lou Salome (1861-1937). She was compared to George Sand, half a century ago, for a free lifestyle, though Sand had a richer gamut of emotions and engagement.

She could lead this kind of life because she received a monthly stipend from the Russian government due to her officer of a father.

Lou got close relationships with Nietzsche, Rainer Maria Rilke, Freud, Paul Ree, Heinrich Gillot, Zemek (Friedrich Pineless, a Danish neurologist who was 7 years younger)…

Before the age of 35, Lou never engaged in love making: She was anorexic, flat chested, and had probably bad experiences in physical contacts with her brothers and father (incest?).

After the age of 35, she got totally in sexual activities, mostly with younger men.

Zemek was the first man she shared sexual intercourse with and she confined to Ernst Pfeiffer at a late age: (Zemek) was the man she feels most ashamed of (the muddy routes of sensuality?)

She decided to marry Andreas, a professor of Oriental and Central languages at the university of Gottingen where she settle down till her death.

Each Spring, Lou would travel around Europe, tackled by Zemek, until he was sick and tired of carrying around her luggage while she had sweet eyes to the young boys.

She wrote: Natural love is based on the principle of infidelity (like many animals?)

Lou could Not dissociate love from spirituality: Sexual Love must be short and fugitive: Must be regenerated at each amorous fiesta.

She never had the courage to put in this world a human being: We had to be more than ourselves, a course of living that requires immense focus.

At the age of 50, she gets initiated to psycho-analysis around 1912.

She landed in Vienna in August 1912 in order to attend the Wednesday sessions of Freud disciples

Freud mentioned that that her stay in Vienna may have been the most exciting and fruitful period in her destiny.

Lou and Freud had frequent and lengthy correspondence for many years.  They started the trend of exchanging portraits.

She disagreed with Freud on the subject of narcissism.

She practiced psycho-analysis during and after the WWI in Russia and invested many hours treating soldiers of their trauma.

She adopted Marienchen, an illegitimate girl of her husband, and made her heritiere.

Her abundant correspondence and articles were Not translated from German.

Such as “Anal und sexual, 1916”, “Creation of God”, My life, Love of narcissism, Eros.

Fenitchka and Rodinka were translated.

Lou might have destroyed many lives (men committing suicide, like Victor Tausk, Paul Ree…) and laid waste to many marriages, but her company was stimulating.

Men felt larger in her presence and she delivered them from their strong personality, though she was never delivered herself from her personality