Psychoanalyst and author Lou Andreas-Salome may seem to be a figure remote from us, one belonging to a pre-1914 Europe, but in many ways, she is our contemporary. She travelled in a highly romantic world as socialite, sociologist, and author. She was part of Georg Simmel's salon, the most exclusive in Berlin, frequented by elusive poet Stefan Georg, dramatist Paul Ernst, social theorist and polymath Max Weber, and Georg Lukacs, among others.

Salome's unique contribution to the erotic was that she argued sexual difference ran deeper than economics and equality--the politics of Marx and the ideals of the French Revolution. For Salome, to think about women and their erotic nature, you must start with their biological and psychological difference, not their economic situation.

Salome was an outstanding theorist. Her books on Nietzsche and on Rilke are major studies. The field of psychoanalysis would not have developed in the way it did without Lou Andreas-Salome. We cannot understand Freud's "rationalism" or his anti-religious sensibility without Salome's writings. This new English translation is an essential text of psychoanalysis, one that shaped the very conception of the field.

Psychoanalyst and author Lou Andreas-Salome may seem to be a figure remote from us, one belonging to a pre-1914 Europe, but in many ways, she is our contemporary. She travelled in a highly romantic world as socialite, sociologist, and author. She was part of Georg Simmel's salon, the most exclusive in Berlin, frequented by elusive poet Stefan Georg, dramatist Paul Ernst, social theorist and polymath Max Weber, and Georg Lukacs, among others.

Salome's unique contribution to the erotic was that she argued sexual difference ran deeper than economics and equality--the politics of Marx and the ideals of the French Revolution. For Salome, to think about women and their erotic nature, you must start with their biological and psychological difference, not their economic situation.

Salome was an outstanding theorist. Her books on Nietzsche and on Rilke are major studies. The field of psychoanalysis would not have developed in the way it did without Lou Andreas-Salome. We cannot understand Freud's "rationalism" or his anti-religious sensibility without Salome's writings. This new English translation is an essential text of psychoanalysis, one that shaped the very conception of the field.

As a psychoanalyst and author, Lou Andreas-Salome traverses the mystery of sexuality in much of her work. This book, comprised of two texts originally written for adolescents, uniquely explores sexual education and the collision of sexuality and religion across the lifespan. The first piece, "Three Letters to a Young Boy" (1917), is a psychoanalytic fairy tale. The letters offer an interesting version of the evolution of sexual knowledge from childhood through adolescence. The second piece, "The Devil & His Grandmother" (1922), merges sexuality with religion, encapsulating three ages of woman-child, to a lost soul and the Devil's bride, to the Devil's Grandmother. Written in charmingly convoluted dialogue, this work has a cinematic, fanciful feel. Both pieces dispense with academic formality and point to a relaxed new phase in Salome's writing life. Interestingly, this tone can also be detected in her blossoming correspondence with Sigmund Freud, which contrasts starkly with her sombre letters to Rainer Maria Rilke. It is with the spirit of free thinking demonstrated in these two selections, perhaps informed by Salome's experimentation with free association, that the reader is transported to a new theatre of Salome's imagination.