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In this book Frank Sulloway calls for multiple revisions of established views on Freud and psychoanalysis, views which, he declares, are wrapped in myths and politics. His own thesis may well be best set forth in the title, Freud, Biologist of the Mind, and the subtitle, Beyond the Psychoanalytic Legend. Describing his study as a "comprehensive intellectual biography of Sigmund Freud," he considers that it offers a scientific approach in contrast to the usual type of scholarship seen up to now. This, he claims, "has been a largely internal affair dominated by Freud, the Freud family, psychoanalysts-turned-historians, and former patients. Over the years these psychoanalytic devotees have cultivated a complex and politically expedient mythology about their collective past, a mythology that ranks as a fascinating accomplishment in its own right" (p. xiii). Presumably no conditions were laid down to insure Sulloway's adherence to a particular political mythology, since he speaks of his research at the Freud library in England where "Dr. Anna Freud kindly allowed me to examine [a] portion of her father's personal library" and extended "gracious hospitality during my several visits to the Freud home" (p. xvii).
The author's background includes a period as a junior fellow in the Harvard Society of Fellows, at which time he wrote this book, and later membership in the Institute for Advanced Study at Princeton. At last report, he occupied a postdoctoral fellowship in psychology at the University of California, Berkeley. The jacket assures us that "this revealing work completely transforms our understanding of Freud. After reading it, no one will ever see the man or his work in the same light again." The advertising for this book has been vigorous and in the same vein, and an expectable following among reviewers has jubilantly taken up the cry. Nevertheless, there have been several reservations and expressions of criticism as well.
Sulloway's approach is challenging a