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It was only by chance that I discovered this book, having consulted the author on a related matter concerning the possible biographical origins of Freud's death drive concept. Although time was up for contributing copy for this issue of Couple and Family Psychoanalysis, the relevance of his book for its theme compelled me to review it.
Readers familiar with Kahr's work will know that he is a historian and biographer of exceptional talent who has opened doors for lay readers and seasoned practitioners alike to appreciate and understand psychoanalysis. This book is no exception. As the inaugural publication in a new Freud Museum London series of publications, he offers a meticulously researched and eminently readable biography of Sigmund Freud, the founder of psychoanalysis. It is a biography viewed through the lens of a pandemic, the product of a writing project embarked upon and completed as our contemporary world endured—and continues to endure—iterations of the coronavirus pandemic.
The word “pandemic” commonly refers to a widespread disease, and its use in connection with Freud is apposite to his life, infused as it was with affliction whose roots might all be attributed to environmental malaise. The poverty, privation, rivalries, and bereavements associated with growing up in a large family living in cramped surroundings; the personal and professional vilification suffered in response to basing a psychological treatment on a theory of unconscious processes that included repressed sexuality; a world war that placed three of his sons in mortal danger as serving soldiers; a flu pandemic that ravaged his family and claimed a daughter as its victim; the excruciating pain endured over many years as much from the treatment of oral cancer as from the condition itself; and the lifelong persecution as a Jew living in Catholic Austria, culminating in the Nazi persecution from which Freud reluctantly fled his home in Vienna to take refuge in London—all these signify trauma wi