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This small volume is one of a series published as the Twentieth Century Library, the individual titles being the names of such men as Joyce, Darwin, Einstein, Shaw, etc. It is addressed to the enlightened lay public and is designed to show Freud's influence upon and place in our world. It was not the intention of the publishers that this be a biography. The author deals 'with the problem of the essence and the strength of psychoanalysis, the influence of which is now felt in science and literature, in religious discussions, and even in the clinical work of the internist and the surgeon'. This necessitates a review of the misunderstandings concerning it, of the rejection of it by some and the disappointed hopes of those who expected too much, of the services it has rendered and of the accomplishments which reasonably may be expected of it in future. Just because its approach is from the level of meaning rather than content this concise presentation should prove of real interest to psychoanalysts, for the historical perspectives are developed with fine scholarship and the author's gift for reaching to the core of significance in Freud's discoveries gives great vigor to the book.
The author gives a brief chronology of the turning points in Freud's life, a simple picture of his character and personality and the essentials of his discoveries and theories. He points out, 'it was not the unconscious that Freud discovered, but its power to hold us in its sway … it was the dynamic power of the unconscious' that was the discovery. 'As soon as he gained his first insight into the unconscious, he began to seek for methods which would enable him to weaken its power.' His method involved the use of intuition, by means of the unconscious of the observer.
After a glance at the influence of psychoanalysis on literature, Dr. Zilboorg proceeds by way of Zweig's bitter complaint that psychoanalysis can 'give knowledge [but] has no place for faith' to consideration of the relation