Prophecy Coles

Prophecy Coles trained as a psychotherapist at the Lincoln Clinic but is now retired. She has always been interested in writing about people on the margin of interest to the psychoanalytic world, includin siblings, The Importance of Sibling Relationships in Psychoanalysis (2003), forgotten ancestors, The Uninvited Guest from the Unremembered Past (2011), wet nurses and nannies, The Shadow of the Second Mother (2015), stepfamilies, Psychoanalytic and Psychotherapeutic Perspectives on Stepfamilies and Stepparenting (2018), and the illegitimate child, Psychoanalytic Perspectives on Illegitimacy, Adoption and Reproductive Technology (2021). Now she has written on the forgotten child psychoanalyst, Hermine Hug-Hellmuth, whose life was overshadowed by the hidden secret of her illegitimately born sister who had an illegitimate child, Hermine’s nephew. Hermine was the first Viennese child psychoanalyst and much admired by Freud. Her tragic end, when she was murdered by her illegitimately born nephew in 1924, has meant she has been ignored by historians of psychoanalysis until MacLean and Rappen (1991) translated much of her work and wrote a short biography of her.