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This book provides insight into the theory of the mind upon which Freud built psychoanalysis, demonstrating how it came to organize ideas which at that time had “currency” (p. 73) among those who were interested in physical and psychic suffering. The book draws together a number of pieces that have appeared in international journals of psychoanalysis since 1993. The reader is encouraged to enter into the mentality of the time, seeing it from different angles and gaining an understanding of both the ways in which it was changing and the aspects of it that were rather more fixed. The book is able to broach a whole series of questions that the ‘doctors’ and then the ‘healers of the spirit’ were asking themselves at that time as they grappled with mental health issues. Bonomi paints a wide-ranging and convincing picture that enables the reader to see where and how psychoanalysis originated and which metaphors it came, gradually, to re-invest with meaning.
The author has created a valuable work for scholars of our discipline, describing the cultural, moral and scientific milieu within which Freud was operating and from which he drew inspiration. In doing this, Bonomi sets a scene for the reader which is little known, or, if known, rarely connected to the origins of metapsycho-logy and the practice of psychoanalysis. The originality of Bonomi's historical research lies in the fact that he does not dwell only on Freud's knowledge and theoretical understanding, but, crucially, he examines and tunes into the atmosphere in which Freud was immersed in the clinics, hospitals and doctors’ surgeries he visited. In short, Bonomi explores the dominant beliefs of the period — the values and preconceptions which prevailed. As a result he is able to illustrate, shedding new light on Freud's undertaking, how Freud was sometimes able to break with the assumptions of the time but at other times remained constrained by these, unable to overcome them — a prisoner to that which, for example,