You do not currently have permission to view the full text for this document. Please sign in to an account with an active subscription or contact support.
This book merits attention mainly in that it raises the problem of methodology in pathobiography and of evaluating Wilson's creative achievements and public acclaim in connection with his pathology. Except for the Introduction, it is highly questionable whether Freud had anything to do with the material and formulations in this book after 1932. Bullitt himself does not claim that Freud wrote any part of the final version. Freud's statement that he was “equally responsible” with Bullitt for the analytic part needs to be viewed in the light of Freud's personal burdens at the time: He had been assisted by Bullitt in his flight from Hitlerism, and Freud was at that time fatally ill.
Although Freud states that Wilson was an “unsympathetic” figure to him, the nearly unqualified denigration of Wilson throughout the book is startingly unlike the Freudian manner. Freud's own characteristic approach is more evident in his citing Shakespeare's Marc Anthony on the dead Brutus:
… the elementsSo mixed in him that nature might stand upAnd say to all the world: ‘This was a man!’