The novel “The Remaking of Sigmund Freud” by Barry N. Malzberg was published for the first time in 1985.
Deep space missions require special attention to the crew’s psychological needs. For this reason it was decided to create simulacra that faithfully reproduce artists such as Mark Twain or Emily Dickinson but also Sigmund Freud, to be able to offer help to those who suffer from some neuroses or other psychological problems.
Sigmund Freud’s replicant reproduces the original man’s personality traits and has all his memories. This means that he has his original’s skills but also that for him the situations during space missions are something completely different from what he remembers. On Venus or on a spaceship, helping the staff can be really hard.
Barry N. Malzberg is an author who in the course of his career often wrote stories of characters alienated as a result of adverse reactions to possible future technological advances. In “The Remaking of Sigmund Freud” the problem is identified in the difficulty to adapt to long journeys in deep space that in the coming centuries will become more and more normal.
The solution to maintain the psychological health of staff serving on other planets or on spacecraft is to create simulacra of various artists but also that of Sigmund Freud to offer his services as a psychoanalyst. As the title suggests, the novel focuses particularly on Freud, although occasionally other replicants appear as well.
“The Remaking of Sigmund Freud” doesn’t tell a single story but a few attempts of Freud’s simulacrum to assist someone in different situations. In many ways, this simulacrum’s story is mixed with the story of the real Freud, whose memories were faithfully reproduced. In some ways, it’s self-analysis story as patients change over the course of the novel but the replicant continues his introspection.
In reading this novel it would be helpful to have a good knowledge of Sigmund Freud’s biography or at least read some information about his life to distinguish historical facts by elements invented by Barry N. Malzberg. Different past and future ages can mix and this can be confusing to the reader who doesn’t know the historical facts.
In the future ages described in the novel, the Sigmund Freud’s simulacrum doesn’t seem to have a great success in his new job as a psychoanalyst. The story contains some humor but at the same time is often melancholic because the protagonist tends to linger in negative thoughts about his failures. Honestly sometimes I also found it boring, particularly in his complaints about Carl Jung.
The story of Sigmund Freud’s failures becomes increasingly important until it reaches the last part, in which he hase to face a situation even more different from the previous ones. This time, the story goes beyond talking and introspection and there are various twists although the psychological component remains crucial.
“The Remaking of Sigmund Freud” gave me mixed impressions. The premise is a bit weird in the sense that I find curious the idea of recreating ancient artists and Sigmund Freud instead of training living specialists. It’s an original premise but I found its development often heavy and verbose.
Due to its characteristics, the story has no real pace in the sense that events are limited. Sigmund Freud is the only true protagonist because the other characters appear only in certain parts of the novel and are functional to his story so he’s by far the most developed.
Overall, “The Remaking of Sigmund Freud” is a novel with strong psychological and introspective components. Despite being almost completely set in space, it’s far from an action novel being composed mainly of dialogues and reflections. For these reasons, I recommend it to people interested in this kind of stories and to Sigmund Freud, with no genre restrictions.
