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“This is a book that I have long been intending to write” (p. xi): with these words, Roazen begins his biography of Edoardo Weiss, the founder of psychoanalysis in Italy. By the time this book was published in 2005 (the year of Roazen's death), its author was known throughout the world as a scholar of the history of psychoanalysis, having written numerous works on the topic,1 including a nearly-500-page book.2
Roazen had worked in many university settings, including Harvard and Tufts in Boston and York University in Toronto. He began as a political scientist but very soon became a (controversial) historian of psychoanalysis: his Ph.D. dissertation in political science was entitled “Freud and Political Theory,” and it was soon to become his first book.3 About thirty-five years later, in 2004, he was elected an honorary member of the American Psychoanalytic Association.
What is probably Roazen's best-known book4 challenged the classical and monumental biography of Freud compiled by Ernest Jones, arousing ire in many psychoanalytic circles. This result of his extensive research had already been preceded by other works critical of psychoanalytic historiography,5 and would be followed by numerous other investigations in the following years. Less known, perhaps, but of equal interest are