On Freud: Michael S. Trupp, M.D. Belmont, California:  Wadsworth, Thomson Learning. 2000. Pp.  84.

The Wadsworth Philosophers Series, a division of Thomson Learning Inc. edited by philosopher Daniel Kolak from The William Paterson University, consists of a matching set of about forty slim volumes (all fewer than 100 pages), each a discourse ‘on’ a single important thinker from ancient times to the present. The series website, ‘philosophy. wadsworth.com’, lists titles ranging from On The Buddha and On Socrates to On Rorty and On Quine. Included is also On Freud, by Michael S. Trupp. The Philosophers Series promises not only to meet ‘the practical needs and demands of present-day college students’ (website) but also ‘to empower the reader when analyzing and discussing original works’ (inside cover). Unfortunately, Trupp's book is unlikely to meet either the practical needs of young readers struggling to understand Freud's thinking, or the more complex needs of students attempting to understand Freud's place in the Western intellectual tradition. As an explication of Freud's ideas, Trupp's introduction is idiosyncratic and often misleading. As a meditation ‘on’ Freud, Trupp's discourse is overwritten to the point of being exhausting rather than empowering.

On Freud consists of 84 pages divided into a preface, an introduction and five chapters entitled: ‘Who You Are’, ‘Trauma’, ‘Words and Things’, ‘Bilaterality’ and ‘A Mirror Cannot be a Photographic Plate’. The most striking feature of this introduction to Freud is that Trupp allows the reader to hear so little from the great man himself. While each chapter begins with a quote from Freud, most often from The Interpretation of Dreams, these quotes are never explained or even referred to in the subsequent text, and are therefore quickly forgotten. If Trupp does not let us hear directly from Freud, neither does he tell us much about him. For example, nowhere in the book is the fledgling Freud reader told even the names of his most