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This is a letter which I received.

I keep coming back to Freud because I have always been interested in how people make sense of the past. This was Freud's great subject. I don't go to his work for answers, but I still find his answers "good to think with." Some years ago I curated an exhibition at the Library of Congress in Washington D.C. (which traveled internationally) that attempted to make sense of Freud within cultural history. You can see much of the material of the exhibition here. In the exhibition there are film clips that show the impact of psychoanalysis on popular culture, and there is a voice recording of Freud made at the end of his life (in English).

This year I actually was interviewed as Sigmund Freud at a program at New York’s The Jewish Museum. I even got to see a cigar box from their collections!

The writer of this letter emphasized the 'as'. I suppose he intended something. But I don't know. Besides, I don't know what it means that 'he was interviewed as Sigmund Freud.' Does it mean that he was interviewed from interviewer as though he was a great psychologist like Freud?

I would be much obliged if you help me.:)

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    My very uneducated guess from the letter fragment would be that he was asked to be interviewed while playing the part of Freud.
    – JSanchez
    Commented Mar 15, 2014 at 6:04
  • Sounds interesting - what's the source/link?
    – Leon Conrad
    Commented Mar 15, 2014 at 11:29
  • It sounds like this person is an expert when it comes to Freud, so he was interviewed as though he actually was Freud. The emphasis is likely just because "interviewed" is more usually followed by "by". Not that there could be any confusion unless the writer was writing this within Freud's lifetime, but it just makes clear that he is correctly using "as" here.
    – nxx
    Commented Mar 15, 2014 at 15:54

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You are correct. They staged an interview where he pretended to be Sigmund Freud.

Given that he doesn't mention a script, it seems that he was considered to be such an expert on Freud that it was felt he could play the part and answer questions as if he, himself, were Freud.

Otherwise, he might have said, "I played the role of Freud in a play where Freud was being interviewed."

This still might be his meaning, but the way he phrased it sounds as if he was answering questions in the guise of Sigmund Freud, and trying to answer them as he believed Freud would have.

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Provided he wasn't interviewed BY him, the AS should imply that he was either playing a role as him or had skinned his face beforehand, to gain his appearance, as Leatherface does in Texas Chainsaw Massacre.

The answer must be self-evident - or, rather, I truly hope it is.

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