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In the summer of 1992, Sander Gilman directed a National Endowment for the Humanities Summer Seminar on the topic of “Freud's Reading.” Twelve renowned scholars met at the Freud Museum in London for two months and read Freud's library from a variety of perspectives. Reading Freud's Reading contains some of the fruits of this seminar, as well as contributions from a few additional colleagues. In this collection of essays, the authors explore Freud's literary interests and ask how they may have contributed to the evolution of his theory. They pay close attention to Freud's marginalia and markings as well as to which books he actually read, which pages remain uncut, the books he chose to bring to London, etc. This volume inaugurates a new series on literature and psychoanalysis. The aim of the series is to create a healthy and equal dialogic relationship between psychoanalysis and other disciplines, rather than emphasizing the ways that psychoanalysis informs and explains literature and art.
The excellent essays in this collection range from classical philology to physics, and the authors bring the questions, methods of inquiry, and modes of inference of their respective fields. In a brief review, it is impossible to mention all of the various essays, or discuss any in detail. Two essays, however, that explore the significance of Freud's fascination with Moses illustrate the differences in outlook, emphasis, and approach in this collection.
In “Freud and the Figure of Moses,” Harold Blum explores the Moses leitmotiv in Freud's life and work. His emphasis is on Freud's understanding of literature, historical data, and also what Freud's own writings may reveal about his intrapsychic conflicts, development, and transformations. Blum states that Moses had a special significance for Freud beyond other historic or literary figures and that “Moses was a deeply personal, haunting preoccupation, an attachment and identification rooted deeply in his Jewish heritage, a Biblical, hi