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“Does the world need another biography of Sigmund Freud?” The question, posed by Joel Whitebook at the start of his “intellectual biography” devoted to the founder of psychoanalysis, is apt. For, indeed, Ernest Jones, Peter Gay, and more recently Adam Phillips and Elisabeth Roudinesco have already famously and extensively profiled the life, thought, and legacy of Freud. Whitebook's answer is, most fortunately, “an emphatic yes” in that current advances in research and theory, and (often unfavorable) assessments of psychoanalysis as well, allow him “to sort out important unanswered questions concerning Freud's life and address critical issues in contemporary psychoanalysis and philosophy” (p. 1). And what a sorting out it is!
One has only to enter “intellectual biography” into any internet search engine to see not only the number of volumes devoted to individuals who have left their mark on the thought of an era and beyond, but just how this kind of historical writing, a genre unto itself, is meant to unfold. Identifying the sociocultural context in which a particular contribution is deemed highly significant, tracing the life and work of the subject, analyzing the interrelation between them, and putting into high relief the historical implications of both—these are the rules of this formidable game. Numerous scholars have taken up the task and from Saint Augustine to Lenin, via Leibniz, Descartes, and Hume, from Karl Marx to Simone Weil and Richard Hofstadter, such biographies abound. Yet, while Whitebook delves deeply into the life of Freud and its relation to his monumental achievements, as well as the relevance of time and place to Freud's theorizing, his objectives also lie elsewhere. To be sure, they are those of the author of any “intellectual biography,” but at the same time