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This book, written on a Fulbright fellowship, takes the point of view of a cultural historian observer and describes Freud's first discoveries around the turn of the century and his relationship with his first disciples. Cultural history is traced from the first Wednesday-evening circle in Freud's house in 1902 through the founding of the first Psychoanalytic Society and finally to the Anschluss in 1938. Can a cultural historian going over material already familiar to most psychoanalysts come up with some new and unexpected findings that could make the reading of this book worthwhile? For psychoanalysts already familiar with Jones's and Gay's biographies, and with the Minutes of the Vienna Psychoanalytic Society, edited by Nunberg and Federn, I believe that the answer is nevertheless a qualified yes, if we consider that Freud was unable to see himself and his early disciples within the sociological and cultural perspective that enmeshed them.
The Austrian Constitution of 1867 had raised the hopes of the Jews for social and civic equality, but the Hapsburg monarchy, supported by an autocratic society, allied with the Catholic Church, successfully resisted social change. In studying the history of the parents of Freud's
original circle, most of whom were Jews, the author found that they had already thrown off the shackles of Jewish orthodoxy and begun to participate in a process that led to Jewish emancipation and assimilation. (A very detailed study of the parental background of Freud's early circle can be found in the author's 1992 article in the Psychoanalytic Quarterly.) As is well known, Freud himself had suffered from anti-Semitic discrimination in his effort to be nominated for a professorship, but his indignity was transformed into self-analysis, the spirit of which is described in Schorske's famous 1961 essay, ‘Politics and patricide in Freud's Interpretation of Dreams”. Many of the author's approaches to this period can be viewed as following the pathway of Sc