Freud the man : an intellectual biography / Lydia Felm ; translated by Susan Fairfield.

Format:

Book

Author/Creator:

Flem, Lydia.

Contributor:

Gotham Book Mart Collection (University of Pennsylvania)

Standardized Title:

Homme Freud. English

Language:

English

French

Subjects (All):

Freud, Sigmund, 1856-1939.

Freud, Sigmund.

Psychoanalysts--Austria--Biography.

Psychoanalysts.

Austria.

Psychoanalysis--History.

Psychoanalysis.

History.

Genre:

Biographies.

Penn Provenance:

Gotham Book Mart (former owner) (Gotham Book Mart Collection copy)

Physical Description:

xi, 223 pages ; 24 cm

Place of Publication:

New York : Other Press, [2003]

Language Note:

Translated from the French.

Summary:

"Who has not wanted to penetrate into the intimacy of the creator? Into the painter's studio, the scientist's laboratory, the writer's notes? Who has not dreamed of understanding what lies behind the gesture and the thought, seizing the moment when something comes into being? How does someone become a genius? What is the secret of the making of a work?" With these words, Lydia Flem begins her study of Freud the man, the complex human being behind the theories that transformed the way we think. "In his own eyes," she tells us, "Freud is not a therapist but a conqueror, an archeologist, a detective of the human soul. As he explores the unconscious and puts it into words, he is not afraid to go forward, to immerse himself more and more deeply, to be on familiar terms with the object of his conquest. There is something downright concrete, sensual, even sexual in his connection to his research." It is this intimate texture that Flem re-creates for us here.

What childhood experiences shaped Freud's struggles with his identity as a secular Jew in the days of the approaching Nazi terror and the nascent Zionist movement? Who were the creative writers he turned to for pleasure and inspiration? What lay behind his fascination with railway travel, his constant collecting of archeological artifacts, and his ambivalent longing for the city of Rome? What of his relationships with women: his wife, his sister-in-law, the charming French singer Yvette Guilbert, Princess Marie Bonaparte, and the brilliant Lou Andreas-Salome? Lydia Flem takes us on a tour of the consulting room in which Freud listened to the first psychoanalytic patients and follows him on his vacation journeys with his large family and as a solitary wanderer. She explores the friendships that Freud sustained over a lifetime, drawing us into his family circle and into the intense intellectual and creative ferment of Europe in the early decades of the twentieth century. Here, portrayed in a style full of charm and rich in creative sources, is a unique portrait of Freud the man.

Contents:

Creation day by day

Through the train window

The archeologist

The conquistador : Athens, Rome, Jerusalem

The man without a country

The man of the book

In the witch's kitchen

The shade of the poet

The metaphor man

The friend.

Notes:

Includes bibliographical references (pages [203]-213) and index.

Local Notes:

Gotham Book Mart Collection copy has dustjacket retained.

ISBN:

1590510372

OCLC:

51983536