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This book is a survey of the work of Sigmund Freud during the years 1886 to 1905, during which period the major formulations of his theory of neuroses were made. His major works, Studies on Hysteria , The Interpretation of Dreams , and Three Essays on the Theory of Sexuality , provided the fundamentals of psychoanalysis, encompassing the major theoretical and technical thrust of his work which remained, though these were modified and amplified continually until his death in 1939.
In tracing the development of Freud's early theories, the author sets out to “show that Freud's interest in the neuroses was shaped by contemporary medical trends toward a greater concern with these diseases… closely tied to current medical and psychological literature [and that] Freud, from his first studies of the neuroses, consistently eschewed speculations concerning possible organic explanations and concentrated instead on the psychological interpretation of neurotic symptoms.”
Levin offers a well-documented presentation of the literature that was available to Freud and demonstrates many similarities between his work and that of others in the nineteenth century. The contention that he was especially influenced by the “Heimholtz School” (because of his work with Ernst Brücke and Theodor Meynert, well-known neurophysiologists of his day) is challenged. The author cites many other scholars whose work came to bear on Freud's thinking, notably the psychologist Johann Friedrich Herbart whose theories on psychic conflict formed a basis of Freud's early writings. The concept of unconscious mental phenomena is also widely discussed as is childhood sexuality. Levin argues that it is an “error to assume that because Freud's physiological concepts appear in psychological form in Fred's work, that neurophysiology played