Tomasi's Mother and the Analyst

In this week's Nordic Cultural Newsletter, Jorvik Stilten, is reviewing the Psychoanalytic writings of Alexandra Wolff von Stomersee. After growing up in the court of Czar Nicolas the Second in St. Petersburg, Alexandra married the Sicilian Prince of Lampedusa and Duke of Palma di Montechiaro in 1932 (though she didn’t like his mother). After much procrastination the Prince (Giuseppe Tomasi di Lampedusa) wrote his masterpiece 'Il Gattopardo' (in English this is known as The Leopard, though in fact the word means Ocelot). After di Lampedusa’s death Alexandra became a key figure in the Italian Psychoanalytic Society. The Ocelot is similar in appearance to a domestic cat, and Yevgeny Huxtable’s late Ukrainian Levkoy cat, Charisma, was once mistaken for a Leopard.