Freud: Darkness in the Midst of Vision--An Analytical Biography [Hardcover]

Louis Breger (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: September 26, 2000

Advance Praise for Louis Breger's FREUD
"Louis Breger's rich and readable study of Freud offers a thoughtfully complex account of a great but flawed man. Everyone with an interest in psychoanalysis and the psychoanalytic movement will enjoy exploring, grappling with, arguing about, and learning from this absolutely fascinating book."-JUDITH VIORST, AUTHOR,
Necessary Losses and Imperfect Control "Written with brilliance and insight, Freud: Darkness in the Midst of Vision takes us on a daring, at times chilling, journey to the early years of psychoanalysis, revealing both the human weaknesses and the professional triumphs of its founder. . . . Cutting away the accretions of fabrication and romance cloaking Sigmund Freud, Breger has reinstated historical honesty to its rightful, high place, but the figure who emerges at the end of this breathlessly honest biography is quite as extraordinary as the legend concocted by Freud and perpetuated by his followers. Fresh, vigorous, and lucid."-PHILIP M. BROMBERG, Ph.D., CLINICAL PROFESSOR OF PSYCHOLOGY, NEW YORK UNIVERSITY
"Louis Breger's fine new biography of Freud is a welcome contribution to the existing literature and a corrective to much of it. It is also one of the best intellectual histories of the origin and development of psychoanalysis I have read in recent years. Breger is to be commended for his original research, the objectivity of his views, and the elegance and grace of his writing."-DEIRDRE BAIR, NATIONAL BOOK AWARD WINNER FOR Samuel Beckett AND AUTHOR OF A FORTHCOMING BIOGRAPHY OF CARL JUNG
"Finally, the Freud biography we have long been waiting for. With the history of Europe in the background, we follow with fascination Freud's journey from an impoverished childhood filled with losses to worldly fame, ending in exile in England. We come to understand the impact of Freud's difficult personality on the development of his brilliant as well as questionable theoretical ideas. Breger writes with compassion and fairness toward Freud as well as toward the many interesting personalities who cross his life, with their complicated relationships to the great man."-SOPHIE FREUD, FREUD'S GRANDDAUGHTER AND PROFESSOR EMERITUS OF SOCIAL WORK, SIMMONS COLLEGE
"Louis Breger's magnificent book is the definitive work on the personal psychology of Sigmund Freud. it brilliantly illuminates how the darkness in Freud's vision has affected psychoanalytic history. This book will be central for psychoanalytic scholarship for decades to come."-GEORGE E. ATWOOD, Ph.D., PROFESSOR OF PSYCHOLOGY, RUTGERS UNIVERSITY

Editorial Reviews

From Publishers Weekly

In a major new work on the father of psychoanalysis, Breger, Professor Emeritus of Psychoanalytic Studies at California Institute of Technology, synthesizes seminal earlier books such as Ernest Jones's four volume Life and Work of Sigmund Freud (1953) and Peter Gay's Freud: A Life for Our Time (1988), and provides a new reading of how Freud himself continually altered public and professional perceptions of himself. Breger is adept at reexamining and reinterpreting existing knowledge about Freud, such as how his entrenched pro-militarist feelings about the First World War manifested in his work; his misinformed and conservative disapproval of birth control; and his complicated view of both male and female homosexuality. In addition, Breger fairly evaluates new criticisms of the man and his work, particularly those of Freudian renegade Jeffrey Masson. Especially astute is Breger's delineation of how Freud's understanding of himself as a Jew, as well as the anti-Semitism of his times, contributed to his theories (although curiously he does not refer to any of Sander Gilman's noted work on this topic). Breger's unique contribution is an analysis of how Freud's own interpretation of his childhood "became the prototype for his understanding everyone, a foundation that he relied on throughout his life." Careful to situate Freud in the political, social and artistic contexts of his time, Breger has produced a provocative, well-written and up-to-date account of the life and career of one of the 20th century's most influential intellectual figures. (Sept.)
Copyright 2000 Reed Business Information, Inc.

From Library Journal

Psychoanalysis ia a clumsy tool, not the scalpel Freud envisioned. In this masterly biography and cultural history, psychologist and psychoanalyst Breger (emeritus, California Inst. of Technology) explains why. Previous Freud biographers Ernest Jones, Paul Roazen, Ronald Clark, and Peter Gay lack his combined clinical acumen and objectivity. Breger interprets carefully, guiding the reader through an oft-told story that has never been made so human. "Sigi," though his mother's favorite, was emotionally starved as a youngster and could not deal with this pain in his creatively evasive self-analysis. His professional frustrations were not caused by Viennese conservatism but by his own way of thinking, working, and treating people. Breger movingly portrays the Great War, Freud's initial enthusiasm for it, his inability to grasp the nature of real trauma, and the resulting death instinct theory. Essential for all public and academic libraries, this landmark work conveys a new sense of one of the great, flawed men and movements of the last century.DE. James Lieberman, George Washington Univ. Sch. of Medicine, Washington, DC
Copyright 2000 Reed Business Information, Inc.

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Product Details

• Hardcover: 480 pages
• Publisher: Wiley; 1 edition (September 26, 2000)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0471316288
• ISBN-13: 978-0471316282
• Product Dimensions: 9.6 x 6.5 x 1.5 inches
• Shipping Weight: 2 pounds
• Average Customer Review: 4.2 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (19 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #781,223 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)
  • #54 in Books > Biographies & Memoirs > People, A-Z > ( F ) > Freud, Sigmund

More About the Author

Louis Breger is an American psychologist, psychotherapist and scholar who received his undergraduate education at Cornell University and U.C.L.A., following which he obtained his Ph.D. in Clinical Psychology at The Ohio State University in 1961.

Breger has been Professor of Psychoanalytic Studies in the Humanities and Social Sciences Division of the California Institute of Technology, Pasadena, California, from 1970 to the present, (currently, Emeritus Professor). Prior to this, he taught at the University of California, Berkeley, the University of California Medical School in San Francisco, and the University of Oregon.

Breger graduated from the Southern California Psychoanalytic Institute in 1979, where he became a Training and Supervising Analyst and was the recipient of the Franz Alexander Essay Award and the Distinguished Teaching Award. In 1990, he resigned from that institution and, with a group of colleagues, created the Institute of Contemporary Psychoanalysis (ICP) where he was the Founding President from 1990 to 1993.

Breger's previous books include:

A Dream of Undying Fame: How Freud Betrayed His Mentor and Invented Psychoanalysis (Basic Books, 2009)


Freud: Darkness in the Midst of Vision (John Wiley & Sons, 2000)


Feodor Dostoevsky: The Author as Psychoanalyst (New York University Press, 1989, reissued by Transaction Publishers, 2009)

Freud's Unfinished Journey: Conventional and Critical Perspectives in Psychoanalytic Theory (Routledge & Kegan Paul, 1981)


From Instinct to Identity: The Development of Personality (Prentice Hall, 1974, reissued by Transaction Publishers, 2009)

The Effect of Stress on Dreams (with I. Hunter and R. W. Lane) Psychological Issues, No. 27, (1971)

Clinical Cognitive Psychology: Models and Integrations (ed.) (Prentice Hall, 1969)

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

27 of 29 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars A fresh and lucid account..., May 29, 2002

By 

C. Middleton (Australia) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: Freud: Darkness in the Midst of Vision--An Analytical Biography (Hardcover)

Many years ago, an old teacher of mine commented to me that the published writings about Sigmund Freud and psychoanalysis could fill a suburban library. This could be a slight exaggeration, but the biographies and published essays that one can find on a university library catalogue, for example, reach a remarkable number. Even today, the interest in the man and his work continues unabated, more in the general humanities, however, than psychology itself. What is this unrelenting fascination about Freud that draws so many people to his life and work? This is a hard question to answer, but an interesting one to consider. In the latest contribution to the Freud canon, ~Freud- Darkness in the Midst of Vision~ Louis Breger attempts a somewhat new interpretation of Freud and psychoanalysis, and a successful one.

In the 'Background and Sources' at the back of the text, Breger writes an interesting comment: he states that there are basically three camps or perspectives of the man - the first are the 'fiercely' loyal combatants, the defenders of psychoanalytic orthodoxy; Freud's words are considered gosple and no divergence is permitted. In the second camp are the sharp and brutal critics, who dismiss Freud and psychoanalysis in its entirety. The third category (where Breger places himself) are not worshiping sycophants or radical critics, but those who see the significance of Freud's work, and acknowledge his contributions with a balanced assessment of the man and psychoanalysis in general. This book manages to capture the spirit of the third cartegory with brilliance of insight, objectivity and compassion.

I've read many accounts of Freud and the history of psychoanalysis from hagiography, (Ernest Jones' three-volume mythology) to chatty, uninformed rumour mongering, (Paul Ferris -Dr. Freud A Life) and found Breger's to be the most clinically informed and fair of them all.

Breger set out to dismantle the many myths surrounding the history of Freud and psychoananlysis. This book is straightforward historical revisionism at its most readable form. He writes of the origins of psychoanalysis and its intellectual development against its historical milieu, that gives the reader a true context in which the movement was born and the reasons why it catapulted into international popularity after the First World War. The text cuts through the folklore and the intentionally generated romance of the subject, revealing a clear well-researched account, which remains as out of the ordinary as the myths themselves.

Even with all of Freud's faults and flaws of personality, his steel-like dogmatism and refusal to accept any further developments (contrary to his own) from his followers or divergence from his questionable theories, continues to incite interest and fascination generation after generation. It is his utter strength of personality that was his true genius, that reaches out from the past and grabs our attention. To dismiss this highly original thinker is a mistake. And Louis Breger's ~Freud - Darkness in the Midst of Vision~ emphasises this fact in a lucid, fresh and graceful manner.

15 of 15 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars A new and clearer portrait of Freud, January 15, 2001

By 

Thomas Rosbrow (San Francisco, CA) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Freud: Darkness in the Midst of Vision--An Analytical Biography (Hardcover)

Breger gives us a more vivid picture of Freud as a person, including his daily routines and personal relationships, and how he constructed a mythology of his own life and then universalized this myth as psychological bedrock for humanity in the form of the oedipal theory. The idea in the oedipus complex that the little boy looks up to an overpowering father with whom he also engages in murderous competitive rivalry - at least in fantasy- in fact denied the reality of Freud's relationship with his father, who he loved but saw as weak and ineffective. The oedipal rival actually represented Freud's wish for a stronger, more potent father. This is one essential insight in a book that puts Freud in three dimensional historical space, in a way that previous historians failed to- who either put him on a pedestal, or else tended to bash him. Breger does neither, and lets us see him as a great thinker with huge blindspots and incapacities for tolerating other points of view, which has left a bitter legacy within psychoanalysis. Breger is a lucid and moving writer, as is also evidenced in his previous, also profound, biography of Dostoevsky.

30 of 35 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Get to know the man behind the theory!, September 20, 2000

By 

C. Gelber (Los Angeles, CA United States) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Freud: Darkness in the Midst of Vision--An Analytical Biography (Hardcover)

Despite all the biographies of Freud out there, none have been written by actual psychoanalysts which means no one has really looked at Freud's life, especially his early family life, from a psychoanalytic perspective. Breger's portrait is endearing and a little tragic - it shows us how many of Freud's ideas emerged from his own struggles with the loss and pain of his early experience. Breger's story is as much a biography of early psychoanalysis as it is of Freud's life, and not the mythical, heroic version of Freud's life that he wrote for himself and his biographers have clung too. This is Freud uncensored!