Originally published in 1924, this biography of Freud looks at his early life as well as the development of his theories and his relationships with other well-known physicians of the time.

This book sheds a new light on Freud who, from the beginning, was aware that the edifice he was constructing – psychoanalysis – which revealed in each individual an "ego not master in its own house" –, had clear implications for understanding collective human behaviour. This man was profoundly concerned with matters of peace and war, religion, morality and civilisation. The authors’ political focus is unusual, and their choice of quotes from lesser-known sources holds great interest. Freud’s interlocutors include Oskar Pfisrer, Swiss pastor and lay analyst; Einstein; and the American diplomat William Bullitt, with whom Freud wrote a study of President Wilson, entitled Thomas Widrow Wilson. A Psychological Study. In the Introduction to this book, written in 1930, Freud describes Wilson as a person for whom mere facts held no significance; he esteemed highly nothing but human motives and opinions.

Religion, more than sexuality, cast psychoanalysis in controversy and onto the world stage even as it threatened to dismantle the psychoanalytic collective. In the founding years of the first psychoanalytic periodicals, relational dynamics shaped the psychoanalytic corpus on religion. The psychoanalytic pioneers developed their ideas in tandem even if in protest to one another. Religion is a topic worthy of engagement, not least because the symbolized terrain in the history of religion was so often deployed as a vehicle for motivating, disciplining, or editing out a member of the psychoanalytic community in publication. This book offers an interdisciplinary approach to religion and psychology, including a compelling denouement that reveals new narratives about longstanding rumours in the early history of the psychoanalytic movement. Above all, this volume demonstrates that the first generation of psychoanalysts succeeded in writing themselves into the history of religious thought and sacralizing the origins of psychoanalysis.

The fledgling science of psychoanalysis permanently altered the nineteenth-century worldview with its remarkable new insights into human behavior and motivation. It quickly became a benchmark for modernity in the twentieth century--though its durability in the twenty-first may now be in doubt. More than a hundred years after the publication of Freud’s The Interpretation of Dreams, we’re no longer in thrall, says cultural historian Eli Zaretsky, to the “romance” of psychotherapy and the authority of the analyst. Only now do we have enough perspective to assess the successes and shortcomings of psychoanalysis, from its late-Victorian Era beginnings to today’s age of psychopharmacology. In Secrets of the Soul, Zaretsky charts the divergent schools in the psychoanalytic community and how they evolved–sometimes under pressure–from sexism to feminism, from homophobia to acceptance of diversity, from social control to personal emancipation. From Freud to Zoloft, Zaretsky tells the story of what may be the most intimate science of all.

Every religious community has been affected by the "sexual revolution". The conflict between contemporary attitudes and traditional practices has led to major divisions and controversies, particularly when focused on issues such as homosexuality. This is the first attempt to take abroad look at both the Jewish pioneers of modern sexual thought and the impact of the revolution on our understanding of past Jewish practices and culture. For the first time the writings of leading scholars in the field from the United States and the United Kingdom have been brought together to explore these topics, and the book is essential reading for those academically or professionally engaged in areas ranging from counseling and pastoral work, to religious and social studies.

In 1900, hardly anyone in America had heard of Sigmund Freud, but by 1920 nearly everyone had. This is the story of the translators, editors, journalists, publishers, promoters and booksellers who first brought Freud to American readers. They included scientists and scoundrels, reckless risk-takers and buttoned-down businessmen, puritans and libertines, anarchists and capitalists, passionate freedom fighters and racist bigots. "American publishers," Freud wrote to one colleague, "are a dangerous breed." Elsewhere he called them rascals, liars, swindlers, crooks, and pirates. Here are accounts of their drunken parties, political crusades, questionable business practices, criminal prosecutions, shameless marketing, and blatant plagiarism. There's even a suicide and a murder. And lots of sex (it's a book about Freud, after all). Ideas that Freud promoted are woven so tightly into our daily lives today that, like gravity or air, we hardly notice them. This book, based on hundreds of unpublished records, explains how they first took root in American minds more than a century ago.

Vitz psychoanalyzes Freud's motivation to reject religion.

A Jew in a violently anti-Semitic world, Sigmund Freud was forced to cope with racism even in the "serious" medical literature of the fin de siècle, which described Jews as inherently pathological and sexually degenerate. In this provocative book, Sander L. Gilman argues that Freud's internalizing of these images of racial difference shaped the questions of psychoanalysis. Examining a variety of scientific writings, Gilman discusses the prevailing belief that male Jews were "feminized," as stated outright by Jung and others, and concludes that Freud dealt with his anxiety about himself as a Jew by projecting it onto other cultural "inferiors"--such as women. Gilman's fresh view of the origins of psychoanalysis challenges those who separate Freud's revolutionary theories from his Jewish identity.