Our understanding of the human spirit was immeasurably advanced by the work of Sigmund Freud, not because he discovered de novo psychological truths, but because he was the articulate spokesman for an age that had long been preparing itself for the subtle and contemplative world of psychoanalysis. No longer did the rationalism of the Enlightenment and the sanguine enthusiasms of Romanticism suffice as psychological methods, and with their passing, Western thought was more ready to doubt the finality of objective truths and to turn inward to the restless realities that our minds create. To Freud, the turn to psychic reality opened a world of dreams—shimmering, ephemeral, and ambiguous—from which man prefers to flee to find the comfort of simpler, more concrete beliefs. For Thomas Mann, “truth” and “psychology” were to be equated, and psychological truth was “truth in the truest and bravest