Freud and Oedipus. Peter L. Rudnytsky. New York:  Columbia University Press, 1987,  416 pp.

Paradoxically psychoanalysis, which treats the histories of individuals, has been until quite recently remarkably deficient in analyzing its own history as an intellectual discipline. This point was made in a striking article by Rand and Torok (1987). The book under review here, however, works toward rectifying this contradiction between theory and practice by providing a fascinating intellectual history that implicates psychoanalysis in several discourses within the greater European cultural tradition. It is a book highly recommended to all readers interested in locating the development of psychoanalysis within a broader context that includes philosophy and literature as well as history.

Peter Rudnytsky's deftly written and compelling text traces Freud's preoccupation with the myth of Oedipus through the lenses of biography, intellectual history, and literature, specifically, the Sophoclean tragedies, Oedipus the King, Antigone, and Oedipus at Colonus. The result of his effort is a densely packed book that informs, enthralls, and stimulates the triple lens serving ingeniously as a figure for the tripartite structure of the Oedipus complex itself and the triadic identifications to which it gives rise. This structural richness is supplemented by Rudnytsky's sophisticated handling of the hermeneutic complexities of his endeavor, in particular, by his attention to the methodological debts owed by any post-Freudian author writing on Freud to the subject of his own inquiry. In avowing and even highlighting his utilization of Freudian concepts and categories in an analysis of the quintessential Freudian subject, Rudnytsky aptly describes his project as “eminently circular.”

For me, the chapter on Freud and Nietzsche was of particular interest. Here, Rudnytsky begins by recalling Freud's disingenuous disavowal of any knowledge of Nietzsche's specific writings while at the same time extravagantly praising the “degree of introspection” the philosopher had apparently