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Freud studies would seem to have entered a new phase. At least from the perspective of one who has been following the subject for the last 25 years, the current scholarly output on the founder of psychoanalysis has several distinctive features. Formerly, books on Freud tended to be written by self-directed individuals driven by a passionate if sometimes idiosyncratic interest in the material. Of course, there has been a steady stream of orthodox psychoanalytic embellishments to the portrait of Freud that Ernest Jones tried to establish. But in addition to such relatively unadventurous and professionally selfserving research, there has been a long line of independent efforts to document and appraise Freud's life.
William McGrath's book is a sign that professional historians have entered the field in strength and with a determination to link Freud's work to its social and cultural surroundings. Professor McGrath is especially interested in the period of the 1890s but explores whatever evidence is available about the intellectual origins of Freud's ideas. The first chapter examines the significance of the Biblical figure of Joseph to Freud; the second looks at the signs of Freud's adolescent rebelliousness; the third quotes from Freud's letters to his friend Eduard Silberstein; the fourth goes over the Fliess period; the fifth discusses the collapse of the seduction theory; the sixth brings up the explicit political underpinnings to early psychoanalysis; and the seventh describes Freud's rivalry with brother figures.