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This detailed account of the influence on Freud's life of significant women - whether his family, patients and colleagues - presents us with a fascinating history of the development of psychoanalysis. The authors, a writer/television producer and a philosopher with a special interest in psychoanalytic ideas, provide a non-partisan view of the life histories their researches describe. After a rather confusing start, where they are confronted with the problem of describing the influence on Freud's early life from material written by people who later became actors in his life's dramas, the book rapidly develops into a remarkable exposé of women's contributions to his work.
We are introduced to the young Freud we are used to knowing, determined to make a name for himself in a scientific career, hampered by lack of finances and constrained to wooing Martha Bernays by lengthy letter-writing where she shows herself to be his intellectual equal. His marriage, and the addition of Martha's sister Minna to his entourage, marked the beginning of his intellectual reliance on women that was to shape the rest of his life. For despite the flamboyant friendships and schisms that marked Freud's relationships with his male associates, notably of course Fliess, Jung and Adler, the exchanges he had with his women confidantes are shown here to hold a pivotal place in the development of his ideas: a place, as so often in the history of women's thinking, that was frequently under-acknowledged.