Rating: 
Summary: A fresh and lucid account...
Review: Many years ago, an old teacher of mine commented to me that the published writings about Sigmund Freud and psychoanalysis could fill a suburban library. This could be a slight exaggeration, but the biographies and published essays that one can find on a university library catalogue, for example, reach a remarkable number. Even today, the interest in the man and his work continues unabated, more in the general humanities, however, than psychology itself. What is this unrelenting fascination about Freud that draws so many people to his life and work? This is a hard question to answer, but an interesting one to consider. In the latest contribution to the Freud canon, ~Freud- Darkness in the Midst of Vision~ Louis Breger attempts a somewhat new interpretation of Freud and psychoanalysis, and a successful one.In the 'Background and Sources' at the back of the text, Breger writes an interesting comment: he states that there are basically three camps or perspectives of the man - the first are the 'fiercely' loyal combatants, the defenders of psychoanalytic orthodoxy; Freud's words are considered gosple and no divergence is permitted. In the second camp are the sharp and brutal critics, who dismiss Freud and psychoanalysis in its entirety. The third category (where Breger places himself) are not worshiping sycophants or radical critics, but those who see the significance of Freud's work, and acknowledge his contributions with a balanced assessment of the man and psychoanalysis in general. This book manages to capture the spirit of the third cartegory with brilliance of insight, objectivity and compassion. I've read many accounts of Freud and the history of psychoanalysis from hagiography, (Ernest Jones' three-volume mythology) to chatty, uninformed rumour mongering, (Paul Ferris -Dr. Freud A Life) and found Breger's to be the most clinically informed and fair of them all. Breger set out to dismantle the many myths surrounding the history of Freud and psychoananlysis. This book is straightforward historical revisionism at its most readable form. He writes of the origins of psychoanalysis and its intellectual development against its historical milieu, that gives the reader a true context in which the movement was born and the reasons why it catapulted into international popularity after the First World War. The text cuts through the folklore and the intentionally generated romance of the subject, revealing a clear well-researched account, which remains as out of the ordinary as the myths themselves. Even with all of Freud's faults and flaws of personality, his steel-like dogmatism and refusal to accept any further developments (contrary to his own) from his followers or divergence from his questionable theories, continues to incite interest and fascination generation after generation. It is his utter strength of personality that was his true genius, that reaches out from the past and grabs our attention. To dismiss this highly original thinker is a mistake. And Louis Breger's ~Freud - Darkness in the Midst of Vision~ emphasises this fact in a lucid, fresh and graceful manner.
Rating:
Summary: An Entire Life in 375 Pages
Review: This biography by Louis Breger is an excellent collection of everything one would ever need to know about Sigmund Freud. I was shocked at the size of book itself and once into the text, surprised at how much information was carefully arranged on each page. Being curious about where Freud's theories originated from, I was interested in Breger's chapters on Freud's childhood and adolescence. I did find, however, that this was one area that included more information than was really necessary. I seemed to find that in other places throughout the book as well. There was a lot of information, but it was said over and over again, sometimes to the point of redundancy. I was quite pleased with the chapters that dealt primarily with Freud's theories and their applications to specific patients. They gave insight into the beginnings of psychoanalysis and related well with the subjects that we studied in a recent psychology class I was in. I found Freud's patient/doctor ethics in this section to be less that respectable. I also found Freud's interaction with others in the movement interesting. This is another area in which his personal goals interfered with the movement. All in all, I think this biography was well-researched and provides a good and solid background into Freud's life and things that were occurring in the world around him.
Rating: 
Summary: Factually fulfilling
Review: This book informed me on the one question that I most wanted to know about Freud. I have been reading a lot of magazines, in which the funniest thing that could relate Freud's life to our times was that he had been ask to sign something, like Americans being able to waive a few rights in order to achieve some meaningful concessions from a government which had its own ideas about the kind of order which needs to be imposed. All Freud wanted was to leave Vienna, after "a gang of storm troopers did come to the apartment and confiscated $500," (p. 359), "the Nazis moved in on the Psychoanalytic Press and arrested Martin for a day," (pp. 359-360), "the Gestapo took Anna in for a day of questioning," (p. 360), and: There is a widely circulated story that before finally allowing the party to leave, the German authorities made Freud sign a document stating that he had been treated with `respect and consideration.' It is said that he asked if he could add something, and wrote, "I can heartily recommend the Gestapo to anyone." This sounds like a fine bit of Freudian irony, though it would have been foolhardy to endanger so many lives on the very point of departure. The document has subsequently been found and it contains no such comment. Perhaps it was what Freud imagined himself writing. (p. 360) This reminds me, too much, of Nietzsche, in ECCE HOMO, complaining that Stendhal "took away from me the best atheistical joke that precisely I might have made" (Walter Kaufmann translation, p. 244). As R. J. Hollingdale put it, in the Penguin Classics edition, "Perhaps I am even envious of Stendhal? He robbed me of the best atheist joke which precisely I could have made:" (p. 28). In a thoroughly comic society, any book which can precisely describe the setting for the best joke I ever read, "I can heartily recommend the Gestapo to anyone," deserves to be read. I hope it is this useful for everyone.
Rating:
Summary: Analyst, Analyze Thyself! -- Wonderful book.
Review: This is a fine book which is well-written on many levels. The style is lucid and friendly: Dr. Breger's writing is surprisingly accessible even to lay people like me. Many of the insights it offers into Freud's own thinking and development are original and valuable. For instance, the fact that Freud, wanting to become a "great scientist", chose for his models revolutionaries like Kepler and Darwin rather than healers like Pasteur and Koch [Intro. p. 2] struck me right from the outset as an eye-opening observation. The fact that some of Freud's most famous theories were developed utterly without any scientific backup or citation to experimental/ observational evidence (such as the theory of penis envy, discussed at several places in the book but particularly at 332-334) comes to light in the pages of this book with humor, wit, and great persuasive force. Viewed purely as a critique of Freud, this book is wonderful because it presents an original and persuasive view which I don't think has ever been seen before. It is useful also because by reading it, you may re-visit all the reading about Freud you did in your college days, and it is satisfying to have such an overview available in one book that's fun to read. But the book is interesting also because of the extraordinary vividness with which it portrays Freud's world: the Jewish ghetto, and the intellectual world of Vienna before WWII. If you read this book for no other purpose than to dip yourself into that world, and to remind yourself of the ideals to which its inhabitants subscribed, you will still be satisfied and edified. Dr. Breger is a professional psychoanalyst, and the "point of view" reflected in these pages shows both sharp powers of observation and, at the same, time, the kind of warmth that only serious professionals can develop when they are committed - as Dr. Breger seems to be - to helping people. Freud is of course beyond help, although it seems he might have benefitted from a course of therapy with this author! But Dr. Breger speaks in a tone of voice that makes us feel that he wants to help us, his readers, see something clearly and move out of any fixation with respect to Freud in which we might have been trapped.
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