Freud: His Life and his Mind

By Helen Walker Puner. New York: Howell, Soskin, Publishers, 1947. 360 pp.

DOCTOR FREUD: By Emil Ludwig. New York: Hellman, Williams & Co., 1947. 317 pp.

Seldom has a life lent itself less to gossipy biography than Freud's. This was as true during his lifetime, when reporters had to leave his house without having secured hoped for interviews, as it is true now, almost ten years after his death.

Miss Puner's book is quite 'readable', she quotes Freud extensively, but whether writing his words or her own, she evidences an ambivalence which induces her to tear down a man she obviously admires. Even so, Miss Puner might not have failed were it not for her desperate search for 'news' in the events of Freud's life. Since there is almost none she exaggerates the bits she thinks she has found like the 'colorful' fact that a butcher had his shop just below Freud's office; then, since the greatness of her subject is beyond her, she proceeds to a superficial, often misleading, description of Freud's doctrine and, feeling that this could hardly be called biography, she adds her own opinion of the motives which are supposed to have guided Freud throughout his life.

We are told in the preface that 'it is apparent from the vantage point of nearly half a century that the weapons used by Freud in his courageous search for universal truth are almost as antiquated as the blunderbuss or the javelin'. Unfortunately, the author fails to validate her astonishing statement by any mention of just what has replaced psychoanalysis. Miss Puner's judgment that 'Freud was equipped with a faith in reason and an array of scientific ideas now largely outmoded' seems to be the result of interviews with superior spirits in New York and in Washington. One is reminded of Herodotus in Egypt, told tall tales by wily priests with deliberate intent to delude.

The best section of the book is about Freud's early years in his birthplace and in Vienna. The bulk of Miss Puner's description of Vienna is