Sigmund Freud

by Richard Wollheim

Book Overview

This intellectual biography of Freud presents a fresh and thorough analysis of the whole body of his writings. Each of these is studied in its context, and their chronology is shown to be of great... This description may be from another edition of this product.

• Format: Paperback
• Language: English
• ISBN: 067001916X
• ISBN13: 9780670019168
• Release Date: November 1971
• Publisher: Penguin Group
• Length: 292 Pages
• Weight: 0.72 lbs.

Customer Reviews

The clearest exposition of Freud's thought.

I had the good fortune to study for a year with Prof. Wollheim when he was the Chair of the Philosophy Department at University College London. I went to London to study with him largely based on reading this book, which was, and still is, the most lucid exposition of the development of Freud's thought. More importantly, it is, I believe, correct in this exposition, contrary to many articles and books that fail to understand the theory of mind and technique in Freud's writings. Wollheim was an immensely respected philospher (who went on to teach at Columbia and Berkeley as well)and did not write in a style that was meant to simplify Freud's concepts, but rather to make the difficult ideas more easily understood by accurately articulating them. This is the basis for Peter Gay's commendation for the book. Peter Gay's writings on Freud are very helpful, but Wollheim is more rigourously disciplined and thereby more illuminating.

Freud's Analytic System of the Mind

Richard Wollheim has made a contribution to the way one can come to understand the life and writings of Sigmund Freud that may go on for years as being unsurpassed. The preface alone is worth the price of the book. It is true that Wollheim does not address the issues Bettleheim does in _Freud and Man's Soul_. Rather, he remains specific to his project, which appears to address solely Freud's views, their emergence, development, alterations, and even their incompleteness in certain cases, as comprising a system of the mind.Wollheim reinforces the stronger feeling, that it is in the original writings that kernals of brilliance and understanding are to be found. He applauds the Standard Edition. The bibilography he provides, for the most part, appears to circumscribe the issues more commonly sought for by readers of Freud who relish in, and ascribe, mis-interpretations and construals that more or less support the avoidance of the very issues Freud was most concerned with.In perhaps a way that is his most valuable contribution, Wollheim reveals the personality and disposition of Freud in a manner that is totally convincing: that Freud's works are for the most part either ignored, falsely attacked, or misunderstood. Further, Wollheim shows that throughout Freud's lifeÑmore particularly demonstrated by the way he continued his life until its endÑof how his life is a paradigmatic demonstration of consistently rewarding labor and of irrefutable courage. Wollheim causes one to appreciate Freud even further, in that while being almost continually challenged, ignored, and even despised, Freud fought to reveal for us the hidden pathways of the mind. It is in virture of this effort and bequeathal, that being Freud's corpus, his literary genius, a quest for a knowledge of the truth, and his intention to be able to skillfully lead and guide us through our defenses and our darkened fears, that we are able to gain and accept a deeper understanding of ourselves and of others. It is this that consists of Freud's heroic legacy.