Rating: 
Summary: And the truth shall set you free
Review: An excellent treatment of not only the man and his work, but the time and context in which it should be viewed. Breger's greatest treatment of this topic is his use of context in which he views the work and events surrounding Freud and his comtempoaries. A remarkable piece of research that should be mandatory reading for all behavioral science majors at the undergraduate level.Breger's struggle to provide balance in his treatment of Freud is quite evident in the context of his research. He never questions Freud's contribution to advancing the school of Psychoanalysis. What he does point out is that even a man of his stature is just as human as anyone else in his interpretation of reality. Any competent therapist must not only know this but insure that he/she does not permit their own issues to impact their efforts to assist others. It is this incredible blindness that Breger points out as his chief criticism of Freud which is why the title of his book "Darkness in the Midst of Vision" is so appropriate. Congratulations on an outstanding effort!
Rating:
Summary: "Darkness" is Illuminating
Review: As one contemplates purchasing this biography, attention must be paid to the subtitle: "An Analytical Biography." This is not an all-encompensing portrait of Freud, in that it's not focussed on his many contributions. Rather, the biographer provides a rare glimpse into a man who's name has been omnipresent in all of psychology as well as the arts since his works first began to be published at the end of the 19th century. Frued's influence is undeniable and inescapable. Yet, there remain very few studies into the psychology of the man himself. What is found mostly are brief accounts of Freud's genius and heroism. Now, at the beginning of the 21st century, what we have with this biography is a psychological profile of the man himself. In this biography, there is no "hero worship" to speak of. I would like to say that the biography is balanced, but it's not, and that is not even the point. I believe the reason to read this book is to gain account of historical facts that have been white-washed and profound insights that are missing in other Freud studies. We learn, for instance, of the dynamics between Freud and his mother, which (fascinatingly) were characterized by avoidance, fear, guilt, and denial. We also learn of Freud's far-reaching, heavy-handed influence in the early days of psychoanalysis, a level of control that managed to destroy careers, even lives. One could be left with a vision of Freud-as-tyrant. In this case, pick up another biography of Freud, and you will find some "lightness" to counter the darkness presented in this biography. This book is not, however, some sort of hatchet job. It is vital, important, clear-headed, insightful, and absolutely necessary to gain an understanding of Freud the man. He was no different than the rest of us. This biography helps to balance unreasonable "hero-worship" that, after all, isn't helpful or conducive to level-headed understanding human nature.
Rating:
Summary: "Darkness" is Illuminating
Review: As one contemplates purchasing this biography, attention must be paid to the subtitle: "An Analytical Biography." This is not an all-encompensing portrait of Freud, in that it's not focussed on his many contributions. Rather, the biographer provides a rare glimpse into a man who's name has been omnipresent in all of psychology as well as the arts since his works first began to be published at the end of the 19th century. Frued's influence is undeniable and inescapable. Yet, there remain very few studies into the psychology of the man himself. What is found mostly are brief accounts of Freud's genius and heroism. Now, at the beginning of the 21st century, what we have with this biography is a psychological profile of the man himself. In this biography, there is no "hero worship" to speak of. I would like to say that the biography is balanced, but it's not, and that is not even the point. I believe the reason to read this book is to gain account of historical facts that have been white-washed and profound insights that are missing in other Freud studies. We learn, for instance, of the dynamics between Freud and his mother, which (fascinatingly) were characterized by avoidance, fear, guilt, and denial. We also learn of Freud's far-reaching, heavy-handed influence in the early days of psychoanalysis, a level of control that managed to destroy careers, even lives. One could be left with a vision of Freud-as-tyrant. In this case, pick up another biography of Freud, and you will find some "lightness" to counter the darkness presented in this biography. This book is not, however, some sort of hatchet job. It is vital, important, clear-headed, insightful, and absolutely necessary to gain an understanding of Freud the man. He was no different than the rest of us. This biography helps to balance unreasonable "hero-worship" that, after all, isn't helpful or conducive to level-headed understanding human nature.
Rating:
Summary: And the truth shall set you free
Review: Breger gives us a more vivid picture of Freud as a person, including his daily routines and personal relationships, and how he constructed a mythology of his own life and then universalized this myth as psychological bedrock for humanity in the form of the oedipal theory. The idea in the oedipus complex that the little boy looks up to an overpowering father with whom he also engages in murderous competitive rivalry - at least in fantasy- in fact denied the reality of Freud's relationship with his father, who he loved but saw as weak and ineffective. The oedipal rival actually represented Freud's wish for a stronger, more potent father. This is one essential insight in a book that puts Freud in three dimensional historical space, in a way that previous historians failed to- who either put him on a pedestal, or else tended to bash him. Breger does neither, and lets us see him as a great thinker with huge blindspots and incapacities for tolerating other points of view, which has left a bitter legacy within psychoanalysis. Breger is a lucid and moving writer, as is also evidenced in his previous, also profound, biography of Dostoevsky.
Rating:
Summary: A new and clearer portrait of Freud
Review: Breger gives us a more vivid picture of Freud as a person, including his daily routines and personal relationships, and how he constructed a mythology of his own life and then universalized this myth as psychological bedrock for humanity in the form of the oedipal theory. The idea in the oedipus complex that the little boy looks up to an overpowering father with whom he also engages in murderous competitive rivalry - at least in fantasy- in fact denied the reality of Freud's relationship with his father, who he loved but saw as weak and ineffective. The oedipal rival actually represented Freud's wish for a stronger, more potent father. This is one essential insight in a book that puts Freud in three dimensional historical space, in a way that previous historians failed to- who either put him on a pedestal, or else tended to bash him. Breger does neither, and lets us see him as a great thinker with huge blindspots and incapacities for tolerating other points of view, which has left a bitter legacy within psychoanalysis. Breger is a lucid and moving writer, as is also evidenced in his previous, also profound, biography of Dostoevsky.
Rating: 
Summary: Far too critical...
Review: Breger's description of Freud's life is most apt for those curious about Freud's personal, familial, and intellectual relationships during his youth and through the development of the psychoanalytic movement. Here we see Freud the hard-working father, but also the autocratic leader of his movement, the members of which had to be absolutely loyal to him or risk expulsion. I had two problems with the book. First, Breger's account of nearly all of Freud's relationships fits a single pattern (first, loyalty to Freud, then intellectual independence, followed by rejection from the moevement), which makes reading predictable and ultimately repetitive. Surely many of Freud's relationships differed from this pattern in important respects--respects de-emphasized in this account. Second, it is unclear from this biography what original and permanent contributions Freud made at all to the history of ideas. Breger's account makes Freud out to be wrong-headed in almost every aspect of his thought, lodging convenient criticisms of hindsight which may have been unavailable in Freud's day. In short, the book is not the best for an introduction to Freud as a thinker. It is probably better for those who have read other biographies of Freud and want another perspective.
Rating: 
Summary: A Contemporary Look at Freud
Review: Dr. Breger has provided us with a unique, somewhat unnerving view of Freud in his new book. Those of us who have been exposed to the most common view of Freud, as a genius and scientific hero of our times will be somewhat taken aback when reading what the new research and even newer contemporary views of Frued reveal. Breger is definitely not among those many authors who writes about Freud from an idealizing point of view. Yet Breger is a trained clinician who has used some Freudean concepts successfully in his work for many years. He recognizes and identifies the numerous ways in which many of Freud's ideas were groundbreaking and are still useful today. But that is not the major thrust of this book. Breger therefore does not dwell on this recognition and praise of Freud's accomplishments and as such these points might be missed by those looking to justify their prior positive views of Freud and psychoanalysis. Instead Breger takes us on an in depth contemporary look at Freud's unrecognized pathology. He does this through an analysis of Freud's relationshops with collegues, family, friends and patients. For the most part, Freud's relationships follow a significant pattern. Freud, who was never analyzed by another, and only underwent an analysis by himself through his own interaction with a trusted, but untrained collegue, never was able to recognize the significance of the profound traumatic effects of numerous early losses in his life as documented by Breger. As a result, Freud's ability to become intimate with others in a truly non-heirarchical manner was impaired. The effects of this impairment on his handling of relationships within the psychoanalytic movement and his theory building were profound. He shunned and isolated those that disagreed with him and developed a theory that remained focussed only on the inner workings of one person, the patient. Freud was never was able to incorporate the other person in the duo, the inner workings of the analyst, into his theory. Contemporary analysts who have taken many years to shake the profound influence of Freud on their thinking now view the analyst/patient duo as inseparable in theory building. But when analysts who were in the early psychoanalytic movement attempted to approach these concepts Freud and his loyal subordinates effectively silenced and libelled them privately and publicly. Breger's arguments are so well documented and illustrated that it is hard, try as we may, to avoid the similar conclusions that he has reached. This is an uncomfortable but welcome look at a man who admittedly changed our culture in a significant manner. But it is a welcome one and one that reinforces the effectiveness of use the psychoanalytic process, a use that has always empasized the importance of facing uncomfortable psychological truths rather than avoiding them.
Rating:
Summary: Our Golden Sigi
Review: He was the founder and autocratic (some would even say dictatorial) leader of one the most controversial, yet profoundly influential, intellectual movements of 20th century. While his own thought sought to systematically dismantle the prevailing medical orthodoxy of his era, it simultaneously introduced a new and even more rigid orthodoxy. Though he was largely uninterested in politics, he proved himself to be the consummate politician, always carefully calculating the effects his actions would have on his movement, the psychoanalytic movement, as a whole. He zealously recruited the best and brightest minds of the time, only to shackle and ultimately squander much of their individual creativity through an endless series of loyalty tests in which the more sycophantic and unquestioning you were, the higher you rose within the inner-circle. His fateful obstinacy extended even to his own physical well-being, as he continued to smoke his trademark pipe even after much of his lower jaw had rotted off from the cancer that eventually killed him. Freud is a legend, no doubt. But, as this skillful biography of the man makes clear, his legendary status is marked as much by deep personal flaws as by personal greatness. This is only fitting for the man who invented psychoanalysis. We all have tendencies toward self-mythologization, towards the creation of a narrative which minimizes our weaknesses (either by ignoring them outright or blaming their causes on others) and maximizes our strengths. Indeed such narratives are but the linguistic manifestation of our unconscious defense mechanisms. And consequently much of analysis centers around penetrating the core of this chain of signifiers and discovering the breaks, infinite loops and ideological repetitions within. And while he is no Lacanian (the Frenchman is never even mentioned in this text), Breger's analysis is completely given over to this psycho-linguistic imperative, an imperative which is governed and ultimately enforced by the biographical narrative of Freud himself. This is because so much of what has been written about Freud's life has been directly influenced by Freud's pathological desire to craft a public persona that fits within his own neurotic view of himself as the great conqueror . And so Breger's destructuring of the typical Freudian biographical narrative is tantamount to a bloody confrontation with the man's well-fortified psycho-linguistic defense mechanisms (Freud himself always spoke of analysis in military terms). Whether we're talking about Freud's own autobiographical hero narratives ("On the History of the Psycho-Analytic Movement", "An Autobiographical Study"), Jones' dutiful doting, or even the more recent version of the same by Peter Gay, the man himself is almost always lost in the excremental haze of pre-digested meaning. Thus Freud's neuroses--his travel phobia, his dislike of music, his prudish attitudes towards sex, his desperate, inverted oedipal desire to slay his adopted male children (Jung, Adler, Rank, Ferenczi)--are rarely given the hermeneutical space necessary to stand in their proper relation to the events of his life. Breger's diegetic approach places the events of Freud's life in their proper socio-historical context, but without simply substituting history for personal responsibility, as is so often the case. Freud's cruelty (towards his fellow analysts, towards his patients) is shown to be a symptom of his neuroses, rather than mere juridical technique. (Freud constantly claimed that utter coldness and neutrality was required in the relationship between analyst and analysand, but he was most successful as a therapist when he befriended his patients and showed them warmth and sympathy.) As you may have guessed, Breger is a practicing analyst, which obviously brings certain prejudices to his account of Freud's life. But Breger shows a remarkable level of honesty by pointing out this fact himself in a section at the end the book. And though I may quibble with him over his emphasis on the primacy of personal trauma over the primacy of sexuality and the role of larger social institutions in the formation of the individual ego, I still think this is a superb example of that particularly personal form of insight which only the very best of psychoanalysts can achieve. A fine piece of work.
Rating:
Summary: This IS the Man, Myth and His Chilling Darkness
Review: I am not expert in psychoanalysis. What drew me into this book was the humanization of this slightly stooped, ambitious, clearly brilliant, altogether bourgeois, autocratic, but - yes - great man. Breger shows us, mostly sympathetically, a thoroughly human man, with all the foibles and prejudices of his time. But Breger also shows us the other side of the coin - a fanatic drive for personal fame and a chilling cruelty to all of the many who even slightly questioned his drive for mythic status. We realize the revolution in the late 19th and early 20th centuries wrought by Freud's brilliant, if now widely regarded as deeply flawed, insights into the nature of the mind. Indeed, that there is such a thing as a subconscious, an id ("the horse"), ego ("the man on horseback"), and superego (the rider's "internal voice"). There are so many famous Freudian phrases that virtually all his basic theses have "passed into the common domain", almost biblically, in Breger's typically serviceable prose. I would recommend this aptly titled "Freud: darkness in the midst of vision" to any interested lay person, not for critiques of Freudian theories, though they are well-presented and solidly researched. Rather, I recommend this for Breger's at times soaring descriptions of Freud's utterly fascinating inner demons and his tempestuous relationships with colleagues: the 'Napoleon of neuroses' Charcot; Brucke of the "terrifying blue eyes"; his 'beautiful' Ernst Fleischl, whom he bathed, and whose photo was the only one in his consulting room, 45 years after Fleischl's death. The [narcotics], the nicotine addiction, the erotic Jung, the dissenter Adler, the hagiographer Anna Freud, and on and on --explosive relationships powerfully described. Through it all, Breger mostly succeeds in giving us a balanced criticism of Freud's ideas and, more excitingly, an intimate view of the deeply complex man. The rare photos, integrated into the text, are a treat.
Rating: 
Summary: Freud as an intolerant father - good book
Review: I do recommend this book. Although - it might have been better titled 'Occasional Vision in the Midst of Darkness.' Breger does have some bones to pick with Freud; and well he might, there are many bones to pick. While the author is careful to remind us that without Freud there is no Jung, no Adler, nothing of pschyoanalysis, I would like have seen a broader exposition of the challenge Freud faced in having the psyche taken seriously by scientists at all. It might be difficult at this distance to see him as the rebel rather than as the old established authority - but I think we would have a clearer vision of his life if Breger had reminded us as much of the difficulties Freud faced as those he caused. That said - this book rings true to me. The narrative flow of the book is like a litany of failed friendships, ruined by Freuds inability to tolerate dissent, even by those who loved him well. When we beleive in the devil we tend to see him everywhere. Freud's devil was his own thoery of the Oedipal Complex. He saw every disciple as an Oedipal threat to the paternal authority of his ideas. In fighting this devil, he closed himself off to those voices capable of expanding and correcting his theories where they needed it most. This has left many of his thoeries dogmatic dead ends, and those defending and practising them intellctually dishonest and stunted.
|
