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The Death of Sigmund Freud: The Legacy of His Last Days

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How will the reading world receive a book whose star founded an unscientific science and advocated a complete atheism while often passing his days reading Milton's poetry or in contemplation of Moses? Favorably and, I hope, with a willingness to read through to the end. Edmundson brings to life some of the necessary tensions from the life of Sigmund Freud. In addition he plots the shocking rise of Hitler in an anti-Semitic Germany as Freud enters his brave decline and ghastly demise in war-weary London.

This book moved me and many of the thoughts it shakes in me will stay for the coming months. Some of the remarks on fascistic tyranny and religious fundamentalism that Freud forecasted for our era may strike the reader as obvious or heavy-handed after Edmundson's clear presentation. However, the author also makes fascinating and generous lines when discussing Freud's final work <<Moses and Monotheism>> and its relationship to Judaism and other monotheisms.

Above all, Freud comes off as a teacher who taught his patients how to be self-critical and at the same time how to debunk or subvert patriarchal authority. It seems there is no eradicating the human lust for authority but perhaps as Edmundson suggests the teaching of skeptical tools and irony will be some protection. Freud's life and work form a riddle of sorts and it is his nearly Socratic knowledge of self that grants him the awareness and vitality to live and die with dignity as he lost his sight and hearing to the disintegration of his cancerous face. In Freud's death there is a life for our time.

OK, who were the most influential people of the 20th century? Einstein, Churchill, Franklin Roosevelt, and Freud. You can jockey the order, probably add Hitler depending on your definition of "influential", but that's the short list.

Freud's life as a writer/thinker, like Churchill's and Einstein's, was very long. If you want to learn something about this giant, you definitely want to start slowly. THE DEATH OF SIGMUND FREUD is a great way to get a feel for both the man and what he stood for. Mark Edmundson picks up Freud, after a brief introduction about Vienna in 1909, in 1938. Freud is 81, in poor health, and about to come under Adolf Hitler's Anchluss.

Edmundson, in this short volume, gives you a great feel for how Sigmund Freud lived: how his study looked, his industriousness, his love of dogs, his relationship with his daughter Anna, his relationships with his disciples, what Freud's Vienna was like, what he collected, his (ultimately dangerous) love of cigars, etc. Even if the book did nothing more than accumulate these bits of Freud's life in 1938 and 1939, it would be wonderful, because what can an author do beyond transporting the reader to a place and time? And what a place and time! Freud, Hitler, Vienna, Anchluss.

The author also gives readers a great short course on some of Sigmund Freud's work. As certain subjects dominate the last year of Freud's life - the rise of Nazism, his relationship with his daughter, the need for conflict in his life to create brilliant work, his enjoyment and suspicion of fame, his need to shock and create controversy (to name a few) - Edmundson describes how Freud wrote about those matters, quoting from and summarizing Sigmund's most famous theories and ideas, usually from works created decades before.

Even as an introduction to Sigmund Freud, this book is incomplete (though by design). But it gives you a taste as well as a feeling you're following Freud at the end of his life, trying to make sense of it all. You may find yourself, like me, back on Amazon.com looking for a comprehensive biography of Freud and ordering translations of some of his classic works. I'd say that's a pretty high compliment for the book and author.

"The Death of Sigmund Freud" is a timely look at the last days of Freud since he was facing the march of Nazism, and since after 9-11, the US has tilted quite a bit to the Right, and it is wise to weigh into possible reasons to be concerned about tilting further, and a look from Freud's perspective is certainly interesting.

Since anti-Semitism was rampant at the time, from the book, critics did say that psychoanalysis was right, just that it was a 'Jewish Science' only applying to Jews, an attempt to discredit it. Some of Freud's thoughts on the matter were:

1. Freud called the relationship crowds form with an absolute leader, erotic. Hitler, himself, in his speeches said that he made love to the German masses. Essentially, the crowds become hypnotized. Not that we are anywhere near such a situation, but one surely can notice a more 'patriotic' tone to many of the current presidential supporters and calling dissenters un-patriotic.

2. Inner conflict, between one's ego, id, and superego, is not only inevitable, but desirable to better modify behavior. Seeking some perpetual, peaceful state is dangerous because it is more likely to erupt into really bad behavior. So, public dissent is healthy and should be encouraged.

3. Freud, a Jew, recognized in monotheism, that the ability to internalize an invisible god prepares a person to think more abstractly. He saw Jews' long history with that as allowing Jews to distinguish themselves in math, sciences, law and literary arts, ways which effect some control over nature. Better to have some invisible god, than some human authoritarian one, be it political or some religious one who tries to have crowds focus on him or her. Freud felt that such thinking made Jews more likely to reject pageantry and less susceptible to elevating humans to god-like status, one reason for anti-Semitism to run rampant as Nazis knew they would meet resistance from Jews. Not that one should conclude that Judaism is superior, just that the internalizing of an invisible god is the important part of monotheism.

4. Rather than blame something about Germany, Japan or Italy for the rise of 20th century fascism, Freud felt that internally we are all fascists/fundamentalists, at least potentially. So, it is the inner conflict we need to use to overcome it. Once again, dissent is healthy.

A very interesting book!

The Death of Sigmund Freud is a perfect companion book to the bigger Freud biographies ... a critical addition to the Freud section of your personal library on this fascinating man, doctor, thinker. The author begins the narrative just before Freud fled Vienna for England ... and it ends with Freud's pitiful death.

The comparative exploration of the life of Hitler and Freud as Europe began to change is interesting and well constructed, but the real fascination is found in the details of Freud's working and personal life. I think the real punch in a biography is felt at the point in the book where you feel the subject's been fleshed out ... really captured by the author ... and Freud is now more real and understood in my mind than ever before. He's a mythic personality now. He was back in his day. Edmundson has rendered Freud's human, day-to-day life beautifully ... and what Freud professionally and personally believed, whether it's believable to us or not.

Reviewer Todd Sentell, a Psychology major who graduated "Oh Lordy," is also the author of the hilarious social satire, TOONAMINT OF CHAMPIONS

Using a simple language and a clear style
Mark Edmundson succeeds in re-creating
the atmosphere of Freud's last days in Vienna
and London in parallel with Hitler's rise in power.

He also manages to offer some deep insights
to Freud's main ideas and more specifically
the ones in his last book "Moses and Monotheism.

A highly readable and highly recommended book.

You might be tempted to read this book, as I was, because you'd read other books by the author and had never been disappointed with his ability to teach you more than you'd imagined about the complexities of the human condition. Or you might read a book about Freud because you simply want to know more about the subject matter and its primary setting, Vienna, before, during and after the war. Or perhaps you want to know more about one of Germany's most compelling historical figures - Hitler. Regardless...what you cannot know in advance of deciding to read this book is that you will end up considering it to be one of serious consequence because of its implications for what Freud (and Edmundson?) had to say about the role of religion in modern culture's war on the human psyche. Freud's work on his final publication, "Moses and Monotheism," provides the substance for Edmundson's concluding remarks in this very accessible and enlightening text, and it is these remarks that are most relevant to our situation today. With the mid-east crises developing on our screens before us on an hourly basis, it is hard to resist the urge to photocopy the last 13 pages of "The Death of Sigmund Freud" and pass them out on street corners. I dare you.

This is a well written book. It was educational and informative. I know that some of you feel reviews should stop there. But those who purchase Kindle versions should know that there are many, many typos that at best disturb the flow of the reading and at worse, end up in mistakes. For instance, the Nazi who was to rule on Dr. Freud's departure from Vienna is written as Sauenvald. His name was Sauervald. Minor but anoying. There seem to be one or two per page. I would guess that the publishers just scanned and converted the text from a printed copy rather than created a separate edited file.
Considering that the cost of the Kindle version is $3.00 more than the hardback, it is disappointing. I love my Kindle, but may switch back to paper if this continues to be my experience.
But as for the story, it is well worth reading. Learned a lot about the Anschloss and Dr. Freud. 4-5 stars for the subject/story, 0-1 for the Kindle version.

Freud's actual death and his relationship with his physicians is an inspiring story that needed to be retold. This book unfortunately has the feel of a dissertation with all of the drawbacks. It is diffused rather than improved by its focus on parallel events.

It's a good book, but the many misprints in the Kindle edition, apparently because of careless digitizing (errors in spacing, absurd rendition of accented characters) suggest the publisher's contempt for both author and reader.

Juggle not, lest you be juggled in the daily papers of interesting times. Unless millions of people know who you are, you are probably talking to nobodies. I would like a think that a great joke could summarize the ideal of any intellectual way of writing books, and that Nietzsche's attempt to write a joke with the main themes covered in The Death of Sigmund Freud was section 312 of The Gay Science:

My dog. -- I have named my pain and call it `dog' -- it's just as faithful, just as obtrusive and shameless, just as entertaining, just as clever as every other dog -- and I can scold it and take my bad moods out on it the way others do with their dogs, servants, and wives.

Religion that is tied to particular doctrines dictated by God to Moses and not getting carried away with anything that is thy neighbor's in times when governments were picking on the chosen people as a reaction to being wiped out by the wealthy seem small-minded in this book, and the millions of people who knew who Freud was when Moses and Monotheism was finally published in his old age should join together in irony the way others feel about their dogs, servants, and wives.