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Eissler has written a fascinating book in response to Paul Roazen's bitter and mischievous attack on Freud. In doing so, he took the opportunity to explore some differences in the nature of talent and genius and to theorize about them. His documentation and detailed scrutiny of the charges against Freud while being too legalistic permits a broad and sweeping examination of Freud's personal style in dealing with his colleagues, and students. He succeeds in presenting Freud as a human being with compassion, impatience, tenderness, and irritability—short in a human form which allowed him to make many errors in his private social interactions.
The book deals particularly with the episode of Victor Tausk who committed suicide while in the practice of psychoanalysis in Berlin. Roazen suggests that, the suicide was the result of Freud's indifference and callousness towards Tausk out of some envious concerns for priority and professional status. Dr. Roazen who has already written several books attacking Freud on other grounds draws on a variety of trivial bits of data, highly specious speculations and hypotheses and very improbable documentation to prove his point. His conclusions which derive curiously from a misapplication of the very techniques that he criticizes in Freud, is contrary to every prevailing view of Freud as a monumental genius contrasted with Tausk who had talent but much difficulty in putting it to productive use.
This is the theme of Eissler's book. He carefully examines each piece of Roazen's data, correcting the misquotations, defining Roazen's distortions and ultimately denying his assertions. Having taken on this arduous and thankless task, as Eissler himself realizes, he takes the opportunity to present new pieces of data about Freud and Tausk, through unpublished letters, diaries and reports from colleagues who knew both people. These offer new insights into tausk's jealousies and vulnerabilities as well as illuminating some of Freud's more friendly a