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Although their interest is more concentrated and sustained, psychoanalysts are probably the smallest group enduringly fascinated with the life of Freud. Bits of gossip, along with serious articles and books, still find wide appeal among various strata of the lay public, as well as in the ranks of mental health specialists and those in allied fields. It is no wonder, since Freud's immense impact on twentieth century thought has thrown a spotlight on his creative powers, their main derivatives, and the still broadening sweep of their influence.
Ernest Jones's pacesetting biography was the first; now historian Peter Gay's manuscript promises an updated version, perhaps with new material and novel accents. Carl E. Schorske, among others, sharpened his focus and attracted widespread interest with the appearance, in 1973, of his article, "Politics and Patricide in Freud's Interpretation of Dreams," first given as a Plenary Lecture before the American Psychoanalytic Association two years earlier.1 Using a modified psychoanalytic method to explore portions of The Interpretation of Dreams, Schorske pioneered a historical study of Freud's life and work to establish the specific cultural milieu influencing them. The discovery of psychoanalysis, to Schorske, "was a counterpolitical triumph of the first magnitude. By reducing his own political past and present to an epiphenomenal status in relation to the primal conflict between father and son, Freud gave his fellow liberals an ahistorical theory of man and society that could make bearable a political world spun out of orbit and beyond control" (p. 203).
Schorske and McGrath, his student, acknowledge their mutual intellectual indebtedness. In this recently published book McGrath plumbs in greater depth their common conviction of the "significance