The Case of Sigmund Freud: Medicine and Identity at the Fin de Siècle [Paperback]

Sander L. Gilman (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: December 1, 1994

In The Case of Sigmund Freud, Sander Gilman traces the "medicalization" of Jewishness in the science and medicine of turn-of-the-century Vienna, and the ways in which Jewish physicians responded to the effort to incorporate racist biological literature into medical practice. Focusing on the new science of psychoanalysis, Gilman looks at the strategic devices Sigmund Freud employed to detach himself from the stigma of being Jewish and shows how Freud's work in psychoanalysis evolved in response to the biological discourse of the time.

Editorial Reviews

Review

Mr. Gilman's work is the most convincing account of how Freud's anxiety about being Jewish is reflected in his work. After reading Mr. Gilman's exhaustive treatment, one cannot help seeing Freud as struggling to formulate a response to the Viennese notions of Jewishness in which he was inescapably steeped.

(New York Times )

Gilman [is] one of the most original and stimulating cultural historians of his generation... Reminds us that the best cultural history does not bring us comfortingly nearer to the past, but brings its distance from us to life.

(New Statesman and Society )

Gilman is unrelenting in documenting how the biological literature of the 19th century was racist to its core. A stimulating and provocative book.

(David James Fisher, UCLA )

Historians, no matter what their field, ignore Sander Gilman's work at their peril.

(George L. Mosse, University of Wisconsin )

About the Author

Sander L. Gilman is the Goldwin Smith Professor of Humane Studies at Cornell University and professor of the history of psychiatry at the Cornell Medical College. [confirm]

Product Details

• Paperback: 320 pages
• Publisher: The Johns Hopkins University Press (December 1, 1994)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0801849748
• ISBN-13: 978-0801849749
• Product Dimensions: 9 x 6 x 0.8 inches
• Shipping Weight: 15.2 ounces (View shipping rates and policies)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #549,383 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)
  • #35 in Books > Biographies & Memoirs > People, A-Z > ( F ) > Freud, Sigmund

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