Peter J. Swales


Peter Joffre Swales was a Welsh "guerilla historian of psychoanalysis and former assistant to the Rolling Stones". He called himself "the punk historian of psychoanalysis", and he is well known for his essays on Sigmund Freud. A 1998 article in The New York Times Magazine noted his "remarkable detective work over the last 25 years, revealing the true identities of several early patients of Freud's who had been known only by their pseudonyms." He is one of three men whose machinations are described in Janet Malcolm's 1984 book In the Freud Archives, which originated as two articles in The New Yorker magazine that provoked Masson to file an unsuccessful $10 million libel suit against the magazine and Malcolm.
Swales "became notorious when, in 1981, he maintained that Freud had had a secret affair with his wife Martha’s younger sister Minna Bernays... and had arranged for her to have an abortion after she became pregnant".
In 1989, Swales played a prominent role in uncovering that fact that Freud biographer Peter Gay had written a review published in Harper's Magazine in 1981 of Freud's The Interpretation of Dreams, which Gay had falsely claimed to have discovered in "an obscure Austrian medical journal" from July 1900.
In 1995, Swales sent a petition, for which he had acquired nearly 50 signatories, to the Library of Congress expressing concern that its planned Freud exhibition was not sufficiently critical of Freud — that it did not "suitably portray the present status of knowledge and adequately reflect the full spectrum of informed opinion about the status of Freud's contribution to intellectual history." Following the petition, the Library postponed the exhibition, invited Freud critics to participate, and opened the exhibition in 1998.
In 1998, Swales discovered the true identity of the pseudonymous "Sybil", who was alleged to have had multiple personalities.
Swales died at his home near İzmir, Turkey on 15 April 2022, where he had lived since 2007. He had moved there from Mott Street in lower Manhattan, where he had lived for the previous 35 years. He died from "a short illness and infection." He is survived by his wife Julia and by his two sisters, Patricia Barker Swales and Freda Swales.

Swales's publications

  • Peter J. Swales, "Freud, Minna Bernays, and the Conquest of Rome: New Light on the Origins of Psychoanalysis," The New American Review, pp. 1–23.
  • Peter J. Swales, "A Fascination with Witches: Medieval tales of torture altered the course of psychoanalysis," The Sciences, vol. 22, no. 8, pp. 21–25.
  • Peter J. Swales, The New York Review of Books, October 24, 1985.
  • Peter J. Swales, "Freud, His Teacher, and the Birth of Psychoanalysis," Freud: Appraisals and Reappraisals, Contributions to Freud Studies, Volume 1, edited by Paul Stepansky, Hillsdale, N.J.: The Analytic Press, 1986.
  • Peter J. Swales, "Freud, Katharina, and the First 'Wild Analysis,'" Freud: Appraisals and Reappraisals, Contributions to Freud Studies, Volume 3, edited by Paul Stepansky, Hillsdale, N.J.: The Analytic Press, 1988.
  • Peter J. Swales, "Freud's Master Hysteric," Unauthorized Freud: Doubters Confront a Legend, edited by Frederick C. Crews, New York: Viking Penguin, 1988.
  • Peter J. Swales, Los Angeles Times .
  • Peter J. Swales, "Freud, Cocaine, and Sexual Chemistry: The Role of Cocaine in Freud's Conception of the Libido," Sigmund Freud: Critical Assessments, London and New York: Routledge, Laurence Spurling, ed., vol. 1, pp. 273–301.
  • Peter J. Swales, "Freud, Fliess, and Fratricide: The Role of Fliess in Freud's Conception of Paranoia," Sigmund Freud: Critical Assessments, London and New York: Routledge, Laurence Spurling, ed., vol. 1, pp. 302–330.
  • Peter J. Swales, "Freud, Johann Weier, and the Status of Seduction: The Role of the Witch in the Conception of Fantasy," Sigmund Freud: Critical Assessments, London and New York: Routledge, Laurence Spurling, ed., vol. 1, pp. 331–358.
  • Peter J. Swales, "Freud, Krafft-Ebing, and the Witches: The Role of Krafft-Ebing in Freud's Flight into Fantasy," Sigmund Freud: Critical Assessments, London and New York: Routledge, Laurence Spurling, ed., vol. 1, pp. 359–365.
  • Peter J. Swales,, The Times Literary Supplement, Issue 4557, August 3, 1990, p. 823.
  • Peter J. Swales, "What Jung Didn't Say," Harvest: Journal for Jungian Studies, vol. 38, pp. 30–37.
  • Peter J. Swales, Nature, vol. 378, pp. 107–108.
  • Peter J. Swales, "Freud, Filthy Lucre, and Undue Influence," Review of Existential Psychology & Psychiatry, vol. XXIII, nos. 1, 2, & 3, pp. 115–141.
  • Peter J. Swales, "Freud, Death and Sexual Pleasures: On the Psychical Mechanism of Dr. Sigm. Freud," Arc de Cercle, vol. 1, no. 1, pp. 5-74.
  • Malcolm Macmillan and Peter J. Swales, "Observations from the Refuse-Heap: Freud, Michelangelo's Moses, and Psychoanalysis," American Imago, vol. 60, no. 1.

Foreign language articles

  • Peter J. Swales, "Quel che Freud non disse", in La Sessualità: Da Dove Viene L'Oriente Dove Va L'Occidente. Spirali/Vel, 1985.
  • Peter J. Swales, "Brief Eines Landarztes". Werkblatt, Jg.4, No. 1/2 – 1987.
  • Peter J. Swales, "Freud e il medico di campagna," in La Cifra: pensiero, scrittura, proposte — Sessualità e intelligenza, I, Spirali/Vel, 1988, pp. 172-174.
  • Klaus Kamolz und Peter J. Swales, "Die verflixten Sieben Jahre: Marilyn Monroe, ihre Passion für Sigmund Freud und ihre Behandlung durch die Weiner Schule der Psychoanalyse". profil, No. 28, 6 July 1992.

Articles online at ''Histories of Psychoanalysis''

The following otherwise unpublished articles and letters by Swales appear in Histories of Psychoanalysis: