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.

This is a reproduction of a book published before 1923. This book may have occasional imperfections such as missing or blurred pages, poor pictures, errant marks, etc. that were either part of the original artifact, or were introduced by the scanning process. We believe this work is culturally important, and despite the imperfections, have elected to bring it back into print as part of our continuing commitment to the preservation of printed works worldwide. We appreciate your understanding of the imperfections in the preservation process, and hope you enjoy this valuable book. ++++ The below data was compiled from various identification fields in the bibliographic record of this title. This data is provided as an additional tool in helping to ensure edition identification: ++++ Der Egoismus Lou Andreas-Salome Arthur Dix Verlag von Freund & Wittig, 1899 Egoismus

Edited by Ernst Pfeiffer and Translated by William and Elaine Robson-Scott

Lou Andreas-Salomé (1861–1937) was a writer and disciple of Freud who became a practicing analyst. For over two decades she and Freud kept up an intensive correspondence. Freud found in her a perceptive appreciater and amplifier of his ideas, and Andreas found him a sympathetic critic of her own. Their exchanges on theoretical topics and clinical experiences, their admiring friendship, and the glimpses of their personalities make this collection invaluable for readers interested in the history of psychoanalysis.

Lou Andreas-Salomé wrote her first letter to Freud in 1912, asking his permission to come to Vienna for psychoanalytical training. This extraordinary Russian woman, whose intelligence and beauty captivated Nietzsche and Rilke, now capitvated Freud, while she discovered in Freud's psychoanalysis the true fulfillment of her life.

Freud's letters contain revealing commentaries on his working methods, his concept of narcissism, and his interpretation of Moses, and they treat the themes that preoccupied him in his old age: death, religion, war. Andreas's topics include her relationship to Rilke, and her reaction to his death, and the psychology of the artist.

He would become one of the most important poets of the twentieth century; she a muse of Europe's fin-de-siecle thinkers and artists. In this collection of letters, a finalist for the PEN USA translation award, the poet Rainer Maria Rilke and Lou Andreas-Salome, a writer and intellectual fourteen years his senior, pen a relationship that spans thirty years and shifting boundaries: as lovers, as mentor and protege, and as deep personal and literary allies."

The Human Family is the first complete translation of the cycle of ten novellas that Lou Andreas-Salome (1861-1937) wrote between 1895 and 1898. This collection contributes to the rediscovery of Andreas-Salome's significance as a thinker and writer, above all with regard to her literary contribution to modern feminism and the principles of women's emancipation. Born in St. Petersburg to a German diplomat and his wife, Andreas-Salome has always been a figure of interest because of her close relationships to influential thinkers such as Friedrich Nietzsche, Rainer Maria Rilke, and Sigmund Freud. Only since the mid-1980s, however, have her prose fiction and theoretical writings been reconsidered as important documents of emerging ideas and debates in twentieth-century feminism. The ten stories of The Human Family drive home her critical perspective on feminine stereotypes. They depict a wide variety of young women as they relate to men representing different degrees of enlightenment and tolerance, struggling to express a complete and independent feminine identity in the face of the confining but often seductive roles that convention and tradition impose on female potential. The Human Family provides a subtle and nuanced perspective on European feminist writing from the turn of the last century by a woman writer who was intimately involved with the literary mainstream of her time and whose theoretical and literary works played a significant role in feminist debates of the period, prefiguring present-day feminist discourse on essentialism and constructivism. Raleigh Whitinger is a professor of German at the University of Alberta. He is the author of Johannes Schlaf and German Naturalist Drama and the translator of Eduard Morike's novel Nolten the Painter: A Novella in Two Parts.

'Wenn es uberhaupt die Aufgabe des Biographen ist, den Denker durch den Menschen zu erlautern, so gilt dies in ungewohnlich hohem Masse fur Nietzsche, denn bei keinem Andern fallen ausseres Geisteswerk und inneres Lebensbild so vollig in Eins zusammen.' (Lou Andreas-Salome) Laut Anna Freud, Tochter Sigmund Freuds, nahm Andreas-Salome mit diesem Buch uber Nietzsche die Psychoanalyse vorweg. Auf Grundlage ihrer umfangreichen Textkenntnisse und ihrer intimen personlichen Erfahrungen mit Nietzsche unternimmt es Lou Andreas-Salome in diesem Werk, den Denker und Philosophen durch seine Personlichkeit zu entschlusseln. Ihr gelingt eine ganz neue und eigene Beleuchtung seines Charakters, seiner Wandlungen und seiner Psyche. Lou Andreas-Salome ist eine der bekanntesten Schriftstellerinnen, Essayisten und Psychoanalytikerinnen. Ihre personlichen Beziehungen zu Friedrich Nietzsche, Rainer Maria Rilke und Sigmund Freud sind bis heute Gegenstand der Forschung und werden noch immer lebhaft diskutiert.