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In the first pages of Freud the Man: An Intellectual Biography, Lydia Flem explains that her intention is to describe the personal creative process that came into play as Freud developed his psychoanalytic theory. While this intention is common to other biographies of Freud, its implementation is unique. It is also particularly problematic.
It is unique because the connection that Flem posits between the personal and theoretical dimensions is of a special, inherent kind. A major theme that runs throughout the book is that the writing of psychoanalysis is in effect Freud's writing of himself. Psychoanalysis is not just a scientific theory influenced by the person of Freud, as suggested by all of his biographers; rather, it is a scientific formulation of his experiences or, perhaps more specifically, his states of mind. In this proposition Flem does not reduce the objective formulations of psychoanalysis to mere expressions of the subjectivity of one individual, because in her view Freud's subjectivity, studied in depth, provides a royal road to an objective understanding of the depths of the mind. In this sense, Freud's formulations reflect general truths, as do great works of art, according to some. Flem's position on the connection between the personal and the theoretical leads to a biography characterized by a focus on the parallels between Freud's way of experiencing—his interests, his fantasies, and especially his metaphors—and the basic nature of psychoanalytic theory.
The book comprises ten chapters. Chapter 1 describes Freud's daily life, the environment in which he worked, his involvement with his family, his use of free time, his pastimes, letter writing, walks, preparations for trips, and how he experienced all of these. It would seem that Flem's intention is to prepare a general setting for the voyage on which we are about to embark. Chapter 2 deals primarily with travel, and secondarily with geography. The reader is presented numerous references to Freud's