What was it about Freud’s work, we need to ask, that called for his life? Of the three forays into Freud’s life under consideration here, it is striking that only the concise primer, Matt ffytche’s excellent contribution to Reaktion’s Critical Lives series, explicitly recognizes and does justice to this question . . . ffytche sets Freud’s life in the context of the liberalization of the Habsburg empire and the consequent ferment of the diametric forces of Enlightenment progressivism and antisemitism, twin poles in the formation of Freud’s Jewish identity . . . ffytche’s supple book, concise yet capacious, attests to the complexity of the task of reading the life in the light of the work. - Times Literary SupplementIn this excellent addition to the publisher's "Critical Lives" series, Ffytche explores the development of psychoanalysis and its profound effect on 20th-century thought through an accessible, sympathetic account of the life and legacy of Sigmund Freud. By situating his intellectual biography in its sociohistorical context, the author attends to the significant roles that family, culture, and the dual turmoil of war and anti-Semitism played in Freud's life and thinking. Offering clear presentations of Freud's theories of unconscious mental life, including insightful discussions of dreams, repression, resistance, transference, and the core role of sexuality – later to be modified by original work on a death instinct – the author provides additional biographical detail, addressing Freud's professional aspirations, achievements, and frustrations. Ffytche's Freud is a complex figure, often defensive but also open to revision and change. The author makes a compelling case for Freud’s continuing relevance for students of psychology, psychiatry, morality, myth, religion, and culture. Though noting Freud’s major critics, including those who challenge his contribution from the perspectives of feminism, psychopharmacology, and neuroscience, Ffytche nonetheless defends Freud's psychoanalysis as still able to "disturb, complicate, and make us see things differently." Recommended. - ChoiceThis stylishly succinct biography leads readers through signal episodes in Freud’s life, with rich insight into crucial historical contexts: the vagaries of antisemitism, the sharpening of gender conflicts, the disillusionments wrought by world war. The book ingeniously embeds explications of Freud’s most resonant concepts, not just the unconscious, the ego and the vicissitudes of Oedipus, but also such enduringly pertinent phenomena as ambivalence, deferred effects, defence mechanisms, intimate rivalries, magical thinking and repetition compulsion. A compelling, highly original argument about why Freud can and must matter to us now, in our so profoundly troubled present, Matt ffytche’s Sigmund Freud is a marvellous achievement. - Dagmar Herzog, author of Cold War Freud: Psychoanalysis in an Age of CatastrophesVivid, engrossing and historically accurate, this is now the book of choice for everyone wishing to acquire a broad understanding of Freud’s life, his works, and the socio-cultural context in which he set out as a researcher in neurology and rose to fame as the conquistador of the deepest recesses of the human mind. - Dany Nobus, Professor of Psychoanalytic Psychology, Brunel University LondonI am an admirer of Matt fyttche’s work – he is an excellent historian who has contributed a great deal to the understanding of the origins and development of psychoanalysis. This book is characteristically accurate and reliable and so will be useful for readers wanting to get a broad understanding of Freud’s ideas and some sense of what they might continue to offer to contemporary thought. - Stephen Frosh, Professor of Psychology, Birkbeck, University of London
