Edith Kurzweil's The Freudians: A Comparative Perspective is an ambitious volume. Operating with the perspectives of a sociologist, who is neither a Freudian nor a historian, Kurzweil's objective is to compare the development of psychoanalysis in different cultures, to explore how the premises underlying Freudian theory and practice have been influenced by factors arising within specific national contexts. She explores the ways in which psychoanalysis has evolved in Austria, England, France, Germany, and the United States. Along the way she offers speculations about how and why particular versions of Freudian theory flourish in one country or city and rejected in another, and to what extent specific institutional