Young-Bruehl's biography of Anna Freud breaks new ground in psychoanalytic history. A professor of literature, she brings her classical and Shakespearian background to bear on the life story of an individual who guarded her privacy and wanted no biographies or studies of her life. She had stated frankly, “I cannot share my feeling with the reading public. … “Nonetheless, Anna Freud was a very public person, and she could no more prevent what is and will be wretten about her than she could prevent what was and will be written about her father: they belong to the ages.

In this book, Anna Freud is varioulsy referred to as Cordelia, Antigone, and Pallas Athene, while Freud is portrayed as both Lear and Moses. Their personal lives are inextricably bound and interwoven with the history or psychoanalysis. It is here that