Softcover

ISBN 10: 0393318265 ISBN 13: 9780393318265

Publisher: W. W. Norton & Company, 1998

A New York Times bestseller in hardcover, this is the most highly regarded biography of Freud ever written. To read this book is to enter the world of Sigmund Freud as never before: his family, his city, his professional struggles, his long fruitful and embattled life. Drawing on a vast store of unpublished documents, including hundreds of hitherto unknown or inaccessible letters, Peter Gay deals frankly with the controversies that have long swirled around Freud's impassioned friendships, his love life, and his theoretical innovations which, as Freud himself put it, agitated the sleep of mankind.

About the Author:

Peter Gay (1923―2015) was the author of more than twenty-five books, including the National Book Award winner The Enlightenment, the best-selling Weimar Culture, and the widely translated Freud: A Life for Our Time.

Review:

A magisterial contribution to the history of ideas. A fresh, illuminating perspective on one of the pivotal figures of our time. -- J. Anthony Lukas

Brilliant. . . . A dazzling performance. . . . Gay's ability to integrate into a coherent whole the vast published and unpublished literature on Freud-including hundreds of previously unknown or inaccessible letters-is awesome. . . . A work of art. -- Jonathan Sharp, San Francisco Examiner-Chronicle

Intelligent and wholly absorbing. . . . [A] judicious, original biography, scrupulously grounded in close readings of [Freud's] work. . . . For the lay reader one of the virtues of this biography is Gay's lucid and succinct analysis of Freud's essential texts. -- Michiko Kakutani, New York Times

[This] remarkable biography . . . briskly traces the story of Freud's life and education, deftly weaving the familiar narrative with a style that makes it seem fresh and lively. -- Chicago Tribune