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PubMed

Taking as a starting point a letter to Freud, in which Abraham revealed that personal motives had played a significant role in his study of the personality and work of the painter Giovanni Segantini, the paper offers an alternative reading of Abrahams personality to that usually given in the literature. With due circumspection, considering the hazards associated with applying the psychoanalytic method to a person who is in no position to respond to interpretations, either positively or negatively, the author suggests that Abraham may have fought a silent, lifelong battle against depression. She suggests further that the reserved and somewhat obsessional character traits, so often stressed in contemporaries' accounts of Abraham's personality, could be seen to be a defence against ambivalence and depressive affect, as Abraham himself described theoretically. In an examination of the Segantini study taken in conjunction with hitherto neglected details from Abraham's life as described in Hilda Abraham's biography of her father - especially the suggestion that his mother suffered a depression in his second year of life, following the death of her father and the loss of an unborn child in an accident - an attempt is made to deepen and widen the familiar, somewhat one-dimensional view of Abraham's personality, which the author finds difficult to reconcile with his astonishing creativity and productivity. Attention is paid both to the similarities and the considerable differences between Abraham and Segantini.

[Karl Abraham and Giovanni Segantini].