Peter Swales (historian)

Peter Joffre Swales (5 June 1948 – 15 April 2022) was a Welsh "guerilla historian of psychoanalysis and former assistant to the The Rolling Stones"[1] who wrote essays and letters[1] about 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."[2] He is one of three men (the others are Freud Archives director Kurt R. Eissler and psychoanalyst Jeffrey Masson) whose machinations are described in the 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 its writer Janet Malcolm.[3]

Swales discovered the true identity of the pseudonymous "Sybil," who was alleged to have had multiple personalities.[4]

Swales died at his home near Izmir, Turkey on 15 April 2022, where he had lived since 2007 after moving from lower Manhattan, where he'd lived for the previous 35 years. He was survived by his wife Julia and by his two sisters, Patricia Barker Swales and Freda Swales.[5]

Literature
  • Janet Malcolm, In the Freud Archives (2002) [New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1984], The New York Review of Books, ISBN 1-59017-027-X
  • 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, NJ: The Analytic Press, 1986. ISBN 0-88163-038-1
  • 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, NJ: The Analytic Press, 1988. ISBN 0-88163-074-8
  • Peter J. Swales, "Freud, Death and Sexual Pleasures: On the Psychical Mechanism of Dr. Sigm. Freud," Arc de Cercle, Volume 1, Number 1 (January 2003).
  • Malcolm Macmillan and Peter J. Swales, "Observations from the Refuse-Heap: Freud, Michelangelo's Moses, and Psychoanalysis," American Imago, Volume 60, Number 1 (Spring 2003).
  • Peter J. Swales, "Freud's Master Hysteric," Unauthorized Freud: Doubters Confront a Legend, edited by Frederick C. Crews, New York: Viking Penguin, 1988. ISBN 0-670-87221-0
  • Peter L. Rudnytsky, "Peter J. Swales: Sovereign unto Myself," Psychoanalytic Conversations: Interviews with Clinicians, Commentators, and Critics, Hillsdale, NJ: The Analytic Pess, 2000. ISBN 0-88163-328-3

References
  1. Boynton, Robert S., "Peter Swales, Malcolm’s Uncalled Witness: A profile of Peter Swales," The New York Observer, May 24, 1993.
  2. The Museum Show Has An Ego Disorder – The New York Times
  3. "Masson V. Malcolm Et Al.: 1993 & 1994," Encyclopedia.com.
  4. "Identity of 'Sybil' Finally Revealed," Orlando Sentinel, Dec 26, 1998.
  5. Genzlinger, Neil (21 April 2022). "Peter Swales, Who Startled Freud Scholarship, Dies at 73". The New York Times. Retrieved 22 April 2022.


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