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Freud: Darkness in the Midst of Vision by (New York: Wiley, 2000, 480 pp.)
This review of Freud: Darkness in the Midst of Vision by Louis Breger considers the book in view of previous biographies of Freud and of historical scholarship. The strength of the book, which plainly is written for an audience of contemporary psychoanalysts and clinicians, consists in its portrait of Freud's character and his work with patients, both contextualized in terms of human relationships as well as theory. The book also contains impartial assessments of Freud's collaborators, such as Adler, Rank, Ferenczi, Jung, and data about trauma and loss in the lives of patients as well as colleagues.
Question: Is Freud dead?
Answer: All indications point in that direction, but we cannot be sure since the will is still under restriction at the Freud Archives.
Question: Who was Freud anyway?
Answer: Sigmund Freud is an extraordinary literary creation invented by a person of the same name. It is clear that the actual person once existed and invented psychoanalysis, but how the man differs from the literary persona is still under dispute.
Question: What is psychoanalysis?
Page 141Answer: It is whatever Sigmund Freud said it was. This is why it matters whether or not Freud is dead.
Question: So, Freud still lives on as a palpable presence in the world of psychoanalysis, right?
Answer: Yes, but mostly as a kind of patient, someone to psychoanalyze.