Case of Sigmund Freud

Sander L. Gilman is the Goldwin Smith Professor of Humane Studies at Cornell University and professor of the history of psychiatry at the Cornell Medical College. [confirm]

Mr. Gilman's work is the most convincing account of how Freud's anxiety about being Jewish is reflected in his work. After reading Mr. Gilman's exhaustive treatment, one cannot help seeing Freud as struggling to formulate a response to the Viennese notions of Jewishness in which he was inescapably steeped. New York Times Gilman [is] one of the most original and stimulating cultural historians of his generation... Reminds us that the best cultural history does not bring us comfortingly nearer to the past, but brings its distance from us to life. New Statesman and Society