Sigmund Freud by Ralph Steadman

One genius takes on another.

Bursting defiantly and gleefully beyond the bounds of orthodox biography, Sigmund Freud is a wildly humorous exercise in bending, stretching and speculating on the activities of the so-called Father of Psychoanalysis. Ralph Steadman wields his shrewd wit and fierce pen to highlight the movements of Freud's life and career, from early childhood to the moment of death.

But there's a twist. Through a masterful interplay of text and illustration, each scene is transformed into a "joking situation," which the artist hilariously examines according to the techniques discussed by Freud himself in his 1905 book, Jokes and Their Relation to the Unconscious. The result is a fantastic Freudian festival of visual and verbal puns, unexpected insights, and sheer intellectual enjoyment.

Originally published in hardcover in 1979, released in paperback in 1997, and now back in print, Sigmund Freud is superbly illustrated with more than 50 major drawings and 25 vignettes. It remains one of the most original illustrated books of our times and a Ralph Steadman classic.

Ralph Steadman has been a cartoonist since 1956, starting as a caustic observer of Britain's political and social scene. He is well known as the illustrator of Hunter S. Thompson's Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas. Steadman's work appears regularly in newspapers and magazines, including Rolling Stone and the Atlantic Monthly, and his many published books include Tales of the Weirrd and Alice in Wonderland.