The Death of Sigmund Freud : Fascism, Psychoanalysis and the Rise of Fundamentalism
Author(s): Mark Edmundson
When Hitler invaded Vienna in the winter of 1938, Sigmund Freud, old and desperately ill, was among the city's 175,000 Jews dreading Nazi occupation. The Nazis hated Sigmund Freud with a particular vehemence: they detested his 'soul-destroying glorification of the instinctual life'. Here Mark Edmundson traces Hitler and Freud's oddly converging lives, then zeroes in on the last two years of Freud's life, during which, with the help of Marie Bonaparte, he was at last rescued from Vienna and brought safely to London, where he was honoured and feted as he ever had been during his long, controversial life.Staring down certain death, Freud, in typical fashion, does not enjoy his fame but instead writes his most provocative book yet, "Moses and Monotheism", in which he debunks all monotheistic religions and questions the legacy of the great Jewish leader, Moses. Edmundson probes Freud's ideas about secular death, and also about the rise of fascism and fundamentalism, and finally grapples with the demise of psychoanalysis after Freud's death, when religious fundamentalism is once again shaping world events.
First published 2007.
Product Information
Mark Edmundson is an established, widely published Freud scholar, who edited Beyond the Pleasure Principle for the Penguin centenary edition of Freud.The Death of Freud offers a revolutionary assessment of Freud's legacy.
'By tracing the intersecting stories of Sigmund Freud and Adolph Hitler in the days before World War II, Mark Edmundson sheds a fresh light on one of the most pressing questions of our day: the allure of fundamentalist politics and the threat it poses to the values of civilization. The Death of Sigmund Freud is a bracing, brilliant, and urgent book.' Michael Pollan, author of The Omnivore's Dilemma and The Botany of Desire 'The Death of Sigmund Freud is a story about just how confused we are by our craving for authority. In Edmundson's riveting book Freud becomes at once more remarkable as a writer, and more ordinary as a person, a figure to be reckoned with rather than to revere. There has not been a better book on why Freud might matter now - and on why culture-heroes matter at all - for a very long time.' Adam Phillips, author of Side-Effects and Going Sane
General Fields
- :
- : Bloomsbury
- : bloomsbury
- : August 2007
- : 234mm X 153mm
- : United Kingdom
- : books
Special Fields
- : 288
- : Hardback
- : Mark Edmundson
