Meet Max Cavitch

Since 1999, the Sigmund Freud Foundation and the Austrian Fulbright Commission invite American scientists for a study visit which is combined with a visiting professorship on a university in Vienna. We introduce you to 2025's grantee Max Cavitch, who arrived in March.

What does it mean to you, being here at Berggasse 19?

Most importantly, it means having the opportunity to conduct research in the Museum’s library and archives, with the guidance of the wonderful staff members. Of course, it also means being able to experience the thrilling—and slightly uncanny—sensation of being in the Freuds’ former home itself. My only previous visit to the Museum was several decades ago, long before the renovation, which is truly spectacular.

Why did you apply for the Fulbright-Freud Scholarship?

I applied primarily to conduct further research and writing of my next book. I also relished the prospect of living and working for an extended time in Vienna, a city of which I have fond memories from my early visit and which I now find even more beautiful and exciting. As someone whose knowledge of German—which I acquired long ago, in high-school and college—has dwindled from disuse in the intervening years, I also hoped to reawaken and expand my facility with the language. Conversation remains difficult for me, but my reading and writing skills have been coming back more and more strongly, chiefly as a result of working with German-language print and manuscript materials at the Museum and at other libraries in Vienna.

Can you tell us more about the research project you are pursuing during your stay?

My project is a book, called Fido and Psyche: Dogs in and around Psychoanalysis, 1871 to the Present: An Illustrated History. It’s about an important but often dismissed or overlooked part of the history of psychoanalysis. Dogs both real and imagined have occupied a significant place in the clinical, metapsychological, and cultural history of psychoanalysis, beginning with Sigmund Freud and his family and continuing to the present day. The psychoanalytic literature is full of instances of canine symbolism, phobia, projection, anthropomorphism, surrogacy, and identification. Dogs have also been physically present in countless psychoanalytic sessions and, since the 1950s, have been more and more frequently employed in various forms of canine-assisted psychotherapies. Many psychoanalysts have shared their lives—as well as, on occasion, their practices—with canine companions. Moreover, dogs’ own behavioral and psychological disorders are now treated psychodynamically by growing numbers of practitioners. And, crucially, the past few decades have seen an explosion in the scientific and neuropsychoanalytic study of canine consciousness. Nevertheless, there remains a good deal of resistance and skepticism to overcome, and I hope my book will contribute to that effort.

Dogs were a constant company of the Freud family, especially for Sigmund and Anna. Do you think this was quite usual for a family of their socio-cultural status?

The Freuds’ first dog, of course, was Wolf—given by Sigmund Freud to his daughter Anna in 1925, when Freud himself was almost 70 years old. Keeping pet dogs was indeed quite common among middle-class Viennese of the time, though it was less common among Jewish families like the Freuds, for a number of reasons. But Wolf was adored not only by Anna Freud but also by her father, who went on to acquire several dogs of his own—mostly chows, like his famous Jofi. And there were many other dogs belonging to the Freuds’ friends and associates, including Dorothy Burlingham, Eva Rosenfeld, Hans Lampl, Lou Andreas-Salomé, Marie Bonaparte, Heinz Kohut, and countless more.

The city of Vienna counts approximately 58,000 registered dogs in private households. Do you think there is a specific “dog-love” in Vienna, given this number?

I’ve seen dogs welcomed in Viennese cafés, restaurants, and stores much more commonly than in the U.S. However, I’ve also seen signs of exclusion. For example, the campus of the University of Vienna is plastered with signs saying “Hunde Verboten”—whether or not they’re leashed. It’s also worth noting that the U.S. (like the U.K.) is one of the most “dog-loving” countries on earth. For instance, in my own city of Philadelphia, there are over one million dogs.

Your home country and the world in general are in a difficult state. How do you perceive the situation from your personal point of view, currently being tied to both sides of the Atlantic Ocean?

Like most Americans, I’m deeply shaken and appalled by the innumerable crimes and depredations of President Trump and his enabling oligarchs. The parallels being drawn to the situation in pre-WWII fascist Europe are entirely credible. Indeed, I fear the worst—unless the American people, our elected political representatives, our financial leaders, and our institutions (including our many great universities) stop cowering and fight back. The rule of law, both statutory and Constitutional, must be restored, and the White House must be held to account for its shocking and largely unprecedented assaults on the rights and freedoms of all U.S. citizens and non-citizen residents. We also desperately need the strong resolve and vocal support of the rest of the world to help curtail further financial, political, and military chaos; to repair the tremendous damage that has already been done to international relations; and to prevent the further loss of lives and freedoms, both within the U.S. and abroad—in Ukraine, in Israel/Palestine, in Mexico, Vietnam, Lesotho, Panama, and South Africa, and elsewhere around the globe.

What do you think are the lessons we can learn from the situation?

I fear that little will be learned, by most people, from the current debacle. The cliché about history repeating itself is, sadly, once again being proven all-too-true, and I’ve lost a great deal of faith in people’s ability to learn and to change. Indeed, I find myself thinking often of Freud’s own growing (and justified) pessimism in the 1920s and 30s. Sometimes, when I seek to regain some hope—or at least find some modest comfort—I re-read W. H. Auden’s brilliant and moving 1939 poem, “In Memory of Sigmund Freud” (https://www.sas.upenn.edu/~cavitch/pdf-library/Auden_Freud_elegy.pdf).

What are your current personal enjoyments in Vienna?

Whatever free time I have is occupied chiefly by photography, which has been a lifelong passion and, in recent years, a professional pursuit. One of my ongoing photographic projects is a group of abstract, city-based photo-series, and while in Vienna I’ve been working on a series I call “Leinwände: Wien.” As it happens, some of the photographs from this series are currently being shown in a solo exhibit at the online Decagon Gallery (https://www.decagongallery.com/max-cavitch-solo). I’m also doing my best to take advantage of Vienna’s vast number of extraordinary museums. Two of my favorites thus far are the MAK Museum für angewandte Kunst and the Leopold Museum—but I still have many more to visit!

 

Please let us know more about your general fields of interest as a scholar.

I was trained as a literary scholar and historian, and I remain very active in the fields of American Literature and Poetry and Poetics. But over the years I’ve developed enhanced interest and expertise in other fields as well, including World Literature, Cinema Studies, Animal Studies, Philosophy, and, of course, Psychoanalytic Studies. I also enjoy the craft of translation and have published English translations of French and German works by Paul Celan, Jacques Derrida, Safaa Fathy, and Jean Louis Schefer. Finally, in several of my most recent publications, on psychoanalysis and other topics, I’ve stepped up my efforts to bridge the gap between highly specialized scholarship and more “public-facing” writing.

You take part in our scholarly event program. Can you let us know which events at the Sigmund Freud Museum you enjoyed the most so far and to which you look forward?

As a literary scholar, I am of course eagerly anticipating May’s Sigmund Freud Lecture by J. M. Coetzee. I’ve also found very compelling the ongoing, videotaped discussion series, “Psychoanalysis under Conditions of War”—not least, because of the participation of Françoise Davoine, whose many books, including Mère folle and (with Max Gaudillière) Histoire et trauma, have long been important to my own work. And I feel trebly blessed that, in June, Mark Solms will be streaming a lecture from New York on his new Revised Standard Edition. Coetzee, Davoine, and Solms are all writers and thinkers I’ve continued to learn from for most of my career.