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In Hinduism, a guru is a personal religious teacher and spiritual guide, mostly in matters of fundamental intellectual and spiritual concerns. In the same spirit, in his opening sentence, the distinguished Oxford psychiatrist and author Anthony Storr, who has written books on Freud and Jung, tells us that the Sanskrit work guru means “one that brings light out of darkness.” But then, true to the title of this volume about an odd cast of characters, he proceeds to describe gurus pejoratively as a breed of “false prophets, madmen, confidence tricksters or unscrupulous psychopaths” (p. xii), that is, leaders of cults, cliques, and crowds, pandering a dubious mix of paranoia, mysticism, and religion. While speaking in the name of science, though, Storr does not clearly differentiate genuine religion and mysticism from their spurious varieties and uses the words religion and faith in their pejorative connotation of unsound and unfounded beliefs and convictions. We immediately wonder: how are people like Jim Jones, Bhagwan Shree Rajneesh, David Koresh, and Mother Meera gurus as Jung and Freud were gurus? And what about Jesus—was he another trickster or psychopath? Marx and Hitler lurk there, too, but are mentioned only in passing. Regrettably, Storr does not deliver on his promise “to show that they have more in common than meets the uncritical eye” (p. xvii). There are no surprises about such cult leaders and Jones, Koresh, or Rajneesh. But the psychoanalytic reading public might be interested in what Storr has to say about Jung and Freud, who have recently come in for more than their share of bad press from a variety of bashers.