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These two brief works attempt to present Freud's ideas in a favorable light to nonprofessional audiences, and to situate him in an intellectual context apart from that of the sciences and the healing arts. Noland's Sigmund Freud Revisited is part of the Twayne's World Authors Series, which “offers a critical introduction to the life and work of a particular writer, to the history and influence of a literary movement, or to the development of a literary genre,” according to the book's jacket. Trupp's On Freud appears in the Wadsworth Philosophers Series, which will include the work of some three dozen thinkers, ranging from Socrates and Lao Tzu to Marx and Habermas. Both series state an explicit goal of influencing the student to read the original works. Noland's intended audience is “an educated reader who knows something of Freud's influence on this century, who has a limited knowledge of what he actually said, and who would like to learn more about the man and his work,” a readership including but not limited to “undergraduates and graduate students in psychology” (p. ix). Trupp's first chapter, entitled “Who Are You?” (p. 5), identifies the target reader as a high school or college student.
Noland's book is a masterpiece of succinct clarity. He presents an intellectual biography comparable in structure and scope to those of Jones and Gay, but condensed to 124 pages of text, without sacrificing depth or subtlety. Beyond giving us concise and accurate summaries of Freud's ideas, he follows each topic with an overview of subsequent controversies in the field. These discussions include