Freud: In His Time and Ours

Elisabeth Roudinesco

ISBN 10: 0674659562 / ISBN 13: 9780674659568

Published by Harvard University Press, 2016

About this Item

Elisabeth Roudinesco's bold reinterpretation of Sigmund Freud is a biography for the twenty-first century a sympathetic yet impartial appraisal of a genius admired but misunderstood in his time and ours. Alert to tensions in his character and thought, she views Freud less as a scientific thinker than as an interpreter of civilization and culture. Translator(s): Porter, Catherine. Num Pages: 530 pages, 1 chart. BIC Classification: BGT; JMAF. Category: (G) General (US: Trade). Dimension: 170 x 245 x 47. Weight in Grams: 1002. . 2016. Hardcover. . . . .

Seller Inventory # V9780674659568

Bibliographic Details

• Title: Freud: In His Time and Ours
• Publisher: Harvard University Press
• Publication Date: 2016
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 0674659562
• ISBN 13: 9780674659568
• Binding: Hardcover
• Condition: New

About this title

Synopsis

Élisabeth Roudinesco offers a bold and modern reinterpretation of the iconic founder of psychoanalysis. Based on new archival sources, this is Freud’s biography for the twenty-first century―a critical appraisal, at once sympathetic and impartial, of a genius greatly admired and yet greatly misunderstood in his own time and in ours.

Roudinesco traces Freud’s life from his upbringing as the eldest of eight siblings in a prosperous Jewish-Austrian household to his final days in London, a refugee of the Nazis’ annexation of his homeland. She recreates the milieu of fin de siècle Vienna in the waning days of the Habsburg Empire―an era of extraordinary artistic innovation, given luster by such luminaries as Gustav Klimt, Stefan Zweig, and Gustav Mahler. In the midst of it all, at the modest residence of Berggasse 19, Freud pursued his clinical investigation of nervous disorders, blazing a path into the unplumbed recesses of human consciousness and desire.

Yet this revolutionary who was overthrowing cherished notions of human rationality and sexuality was, in his politics and personal habits, in many ways conservative, Roudinesco shows. In his chauvinistic attitudes toward women, and in his stubborn refusal to acknowledge the growing threat of Hitler until it was nearly too late, even the analytically-minded Freud had his blind spots. Alert to his intellectual complexity―the numerous tensions in his character and thought that remained unresolved―Roudinesco ultimately views Freud less as a scientific thinker than as the master interpreter of civilization and culture.

About the Author

Élisabeth Roudinesco is Head of Research in History at the University of Paris Diderot (Paris 7).