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This richly detailed and well researched volume weaves a tapestry filled with female characters connected to Freud either as family members, patients or followers. Written by Lisa Appignanesi, a British novelist, and John Forresters, her husband, a lecturer in the History and Philosophy of Science at Cambridge University and a noted Freud scholar, this book both entertains and instructs. Although often as engrossing as a novel, this book offers an intellectual history of the times as well as a serious study of Freud's theories about female sexuality and the contributions to his theories made by his female follwers.
In response to the controversy that has surrounded Freud's ideas about female psychosexual development since the Women's Rights movement of the 1960s, the authors frame this volume with an introduction entitled “Freud on Trial” and a concluding chapter entitled “Feminism and Psychoanalysis.” These discussions of psychopolitical debates are conscientious and informative but it is the lively descriptions of many intelligent and independent women that inform this work and bring it to life.
Amalie Nathansohn Freud was the first woman in Freud's life: the mother about whom he revealed so very little. Although she was consciously revered in teh traditional sense, she became unique when Freud cast her in the mold of a sexual being, as a key player in the oedipal triangle, the resolution of which he identified as the determining factor in psycho-sexual development.
Martha Bernays, “an adored sweetheart in youth, and a beloved wife in maturity” (p. 1) replaced Amalie in Freud's adult affections. He was as protective of his relationship with her as he was of that with his mother. We know more about their four-year engagement than we know about their fifty-three years of married life. The picture