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Whitebook's Freud: An Intellectual Biography is aptly subtitled, for throughout there is a constant interweaving of biographical events and conceptual ideas. The book is richly textured and far-ranging, taking up a multitude of topics and ideas that are discussed in great detail. I cannot cover all the rich material that comprises this book. Instead, I will discuss its basic themes. The overarching intention of the book is to link presumed critical events in Freud's early life and the content of his theorizing, in particular, its limitations—as Whitebook puts it, “a compelling account of Freud's intellectual biography—that is, of the relations between the unfolding of his thinking and crucial development in his life history” (p. 16).
According to Whitebook, “what we have learned from Freud Studies, advances in psychoanalytic theory, the feminist critique of the field, infant research, attachment theory, and extensive clinical experience working with the “unclassical patient” in the last halfcentury” all point to the need for a new intellectual biography that “will allow us to sort out important unanswered questions concerning Freud's life and address critical issues in contemporary psychoanalysis and philosophy” (p. 1). For Whitebook, the rereading of Freud leads to two main claims. One claim is that “the figure of the mother—especially the pre-Oedipal mother” (p. 2) is largely missing from Freud's work due to his dissociation and disavowal of his early traumas. According to Whitebook, “Freud Studies” over the last three decades have uncovered new information regarding Freud's relationship to his mother during the first three years of his life, which explodes the myth of the beloved son and the adoring mother and replaces it with indications that “Freud's early years were marked by significant trauma,” including “maternal depression and absence” (p. 8). Whitebook also tells us that “The psychological strategy that Freud adopted for the coming to grips with his trauma