Freud's Patients: A Book of Lives

(Hardback)

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Everyone knows the characters described by Freud in his case histories: Dora, the Rat Man, the Wolf Man. But what do we know of the people, the lives behind these famous pseudonyms: Ida Bauer, Ernst Lanzer, Sergius Pankejeff Do we know the circumstances that led them to Freuds consulting-room, or how they fared how they really fared following their treatments

And what of those patients about whom Freud wrote nothing, or very little: Pauline Silberstein, who threw herself from the fourth floor of her analysts building; Elfriede Hirschfeld, Freuds grand-patient and chief tormentor; the fashionable architect Karl Mayreder; the psychotic millionaire Carl Liebmann; and so many others

In an absorbing sequence of portraits, Mikkel Borch-Jacobsen offers the stories of these men and women some comic, many tragic, all of them deeply moving. In total, thirty-eight lives tell us as much about Freuds clinical practice as his celebrated case studies, revealing too a darker and more complex Freud than is usually portrayed: the doctor as his patients, their friends and their families saw him.

Reviews

Freuds Patients brings new scrutiny to the methods used by Freud with the patients he treated, including his own daughter, Anna. Not least, the book illustrates through the fates of those under Freuds care that his treatments may not only have been ineffective, but at times utterly destructive. Borch-Jacobsen, one of the worlds great Freud scholars, has done a masterful job in allowing readers to peek behind the curtain and sample the real lives of these illustrious patients. -- Elizabeth F. Loftus, Distinguished Professor, Stanford University, author of Eyewitness Testimony coauthor of The Myth of Repressed Memory
Freuds Patients features thirty-eight historical portraits, but the picture which emerges is a strikingly true-to-life one of Freud himself, drawn by his subjects, their friends and families, and framed in this beautifully presented collection. Freuds case histories have been compared to fiction from the beginningnot least by their author himself. Freuds Patients separates the fact from the fiction with stunning and sobering effect and makes this book a must-read for anyone who wants to know the truth about these cases. It is a landmark publication which reveals the truth so often obscured in the case histories. The result is a riveting read which is not just better informed but much more interesting than Freuds fiction. You couldnt make it up! -- Christopher Badcock, author of The Imprinted Brain

Author Bio

A philosopher by training, Mikkel Borch-Jacobsen is Professor of Comparative Literature at the University of Washington, and a leading theorist and historian of psychoanalysis and psychiatry. A regular contributor to the London Review of Books, he is the author of some sixteen titles that have been translated into nine languages.