The story of Sigmund Freud was once the property of apologists, who were content to take his life and work at their face value. In recent years a new Freud has emerged, no less significant but rather more fallible, a mysterious a creation as any of the subjects who crowded his case histories. This is the man Paul Ferris presents in this brilliant account of a long and desperate life.
The man, his work and his world emerge in fine detail. Stoical, humourous, devious, magnificently self-aware, he tried to explain us in terms of our memories and our past. But it is the wide attempt to grapple with the idiosyncrasies of human nature - his, and thus ours - that draws us into his web.
