This remarkable book is a biography of an unusual kind. It is at once the life of a mind at work, and the story of a long and intricate process of discovery. It takes the form of a stern and uncompromising analysis, and yet the author is so much in tune with his subject that the personality, and even the feelings, of Sigmund Freud (1856–1939) and his contemporaries emerge from that analysis. Readers will also sense the effect of the frightening enlargement of the known area of human unhappiness that Freud's work revealed.
This Second Edition features a new introduction which takes into account recent developments in Freudian studies and analysis