Given Gay's already substantial contribution to Freudian
scholarship, the appeal of a new offering in the same vein wears
thin. Nevertheless, this short compilation of published essays,
newly revised and with two new pieces, functions well as a parting
tribute. The author acknowledges the dangers of his fixation in a
prefatory note, promising to "leave the person of Freud behind"
next time. The essays here run the gamut from humorous to
conjectural to solidly historical, and the collection is nicely
balanced on the whole. "The person of Freud" appears in a variety
of guises - the aging extremist holding firmly to a minority view
that Shakespeare wasn't really the Bard from Stratford, but was
rather the earl of Oxford; the quixotic reader whose list of "ten
good books," provided at the request of his Viennese publisher,
indicates a curious mix of conventional tastes with deeply personal
interests; the traditionalist father exercising the right to name
his children, and whose choices offer insight into formative
principles and influences of his life. These raid other facets are
useful and fascinating addenda to the full biographical treatments
already accorded Freud by Gay and others, while the essay format
provides a responsive setting for the polished and usually
provocative analyses, amply documented. As a sop to voyeurs among
Freud's admirers, the matter of his possible extramarital liaison
with his sister-in-law, Minna Bernays, receives new consideration,
based on recently available correspondence between them. In all,
tasty morsels for those in the know - for the general reader, on
the other hand, these will often impress as academic hairsplitting,
even though charmingly composed. (Kirkus Reviews)
"As every biographer of Freud must ruefully acknowledge, Freud,
that great unriddler of mysteries, left behind some intriguing
private mysteries of his own. It was because I hoped to solve some
of these mysteries that the stratagem of finding my way to Freud by
indirections commended itself to me." -Peter Gay In this book, the
eminent cultural historian and Freud scholar Peter Gay presents a
series of essays in which he tries to "reduce the blank spots on
the map we now have of Freud's mind." Engaging as well as
illuminating, the essays range from reflections on Freud and
Shakespeare to Gay's controversial spoof review of Freud's The
Interpretation of Dreams. The book begins with "Freud and the Man
from Stratford," in which Gay describes Freud's fascination with
the theory that the Earl of Oxford was the real author of the plays
attributed to Shakespeare and speculates on the reasons for Freud's
belief. "Six Names in Search of an interpretation" considers
Freud's choices of names for his six children and what they
revealed about his Jewishness, his love of science, and his
ambivalent feelings toward his father. "Freud on Freedom" deals
with the issue of determinism and free will in Freud's work.
"Reading Freud through Freud's Reading" analyzes ten "good" books
Freud identified in response to a questionnaire. The second half of
the book, entitled "Entertainments," includes an essay on "Serious
Jests" that cites some vintage Jewish jokes frequently recounted by
Freud and points out how these chestnuts illustrate not only
psychoanalytic concepts but the anti-Semitism that permeated
Freud's Vienna; the "review" of The Interpretation of Dreams,
published in Harper's in 1981; "A Gentile Science?" which is a
"report" on the work of one Sigmund Oberhufer, a fictitious
Austrian doctor said to have "invented" psychoanalysis; and "The
Dog That Did Not Bark in the Night," Gay's account of the newly
accessible correspondence between Freud and his sister-in-law Minna
Bernays, who some writers claim was his lover. The essays, some of
them published for the first time or expanded from their original
versions, are accompanied by informative introductions.
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