Mark Edmundson's The Death of Sigmund Freud: The Legacy of His Last Days places Freud's work, often criticized without an appreciation of context, in a rich personal and historical milieu. Edmundson provocatively juxtaposes Freud's deteriorating health with the rise to power of Adolf Hitler (including the occupation and pillaging of Freud's native Austria) and offers not only a psychoanalytic interpretation but also an interpretation of the development of psychoanalysis.

Using Freud's writings on authority as a guide, Edmundson paints Hitler as the prototypical patriarchal figure of authority that, though infantile and fleeting, satisfies the most basic of human needs. This need for authority emanates in childhood, when the