Freud's Women [Paperback]

Lisa Appignanesi (Author), John Forrester (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: October 17, 2001

Freud's Women examines biography, case history, dreams, correspondence, journals, and theory to chart Freud's views on femininity. It also tells the many stories of Freud's women and explores their influence on him and his on them: dutiful daughter Anna, who carried on his work; the novelist and turn-of-the-century femme fatale, Lou Salome; Marie Bonaparte, who mixed royalty and perversity with effortless ease and became the head of the French psychoanalytic movement; the early hysterics who were the cornerstone of psychoanalysis—all these and more emerge vividly from the pages of this important study as it assesses Freud's contemporary legacy.

Editorial Reviews

From Library Journal

Freud has always provoked controversy among feminists. Appignanesi ( Memory and Desire , LJ 1/92) and Forrester ( The Seductions of Psychoanalysis , Cambridge Univ. Pr., 1990) attempt to explain this controversy by looking at the women who were important in Freud's life. Unfortunately, the book is not comprehensive as biography--Peter Gay's Freud: A Life for Our Time (Norton, 1988) is the best choice for information on Freud and his immediate family--nor as a history of analytic thought, since such theorists as Melanie Klein and Karen Horney, whose positions on female development have had a powerful impact on analytic thinking, are not discussed in detail. (These women had no face-to-face contact with Freud.) Paul Roazen's Freud and His Followers ( LJ 9/15/74), while considerably more critical, is a good single source of biographical information on most of the early leading Freudians. Overall, public libraries can generally skip this title; academic libraries that support women's studies programs should consider it for its summary of theories of female psychology.
- Mary Ann Hughes, Washington State Univ. Libs., Pullman
Copyright 1992 Reed Business Information, Inc. --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.

Review

“A marvelously rich and engrossing work of intellectual history, deftly composed.”
- Richard Wollheim, The New York Times Book Review

“An ambitious history of Freud’s relationships with women--a lucid, sympathetic account.”
-Times Literary Supplement, Books of the Year

“This wonderful book is the tale of the great twentieth-century love affair with Freudian thought. It is an overblown historical romance that has at its centre the riddle of femininity itself.”
-Suzanne Moore, The Guardian

See all Editorial Reviews

Product Details

• Paperback: 600 pages
• Publisher: Other Press; 1st edition (October 17, 2001)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 1892746948
• ISBN-13: 978-1892746948
• Product Dimensions: 6 x 1.2 x 9 inches
• Shipping Weight: 2 pounds
• Average Customer Review: 5.0 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (1 customer review)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #2,275,540 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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Most Helpful Customer Reviews

3 of 3 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars An exhaustive, in-depth look at the women involved, May 11, 2002

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Midwest Book Review (Oregon, WI USA) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Freud's Women (Paperback)

Collaboratively written by Lisa Appignanesi and John Forrester, Freud's Women: Family, Patients, Followers is an exhaustive, in-depth look at the women involved in the life and work of Sigmund Freud, who is often thought of as the father of modern psychology. Freud's many female patients, followers, and family members are surveyed and discussed in an informative blend of biography, history, and study of the founding of psychoanalysis. An exhaustively researched and detailed book, Freud's Women is very highly recommended for the History of Psychoanalysis academic reference collections, and Freudian Psychology supplement reading lists.