Killing Freud takes the reader on a journey through the 20th Century, tracing the work and influence of one of its greatest icons, Sigmund Freud.A devastating critique, the book ranges across the strange case of Anna O, the hysteria of Josef Breuer, the love of dogs, the Freud industry, the role of gossip and fiction, bad manners, pop psychology and French philosophy, figure skating on thin ice, and contemporary therapy culture.A map to the Freudian minefield and a masterful negotiation of high theory and low culture, Killing Freud is a witty and fearless revaluation of psychoanalysis and its real place in 20th Century history. It will appeal to anyone curious about the life of the mind after the death of Freud.
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Editorial Reviews
Review
"A flamboyant and hilarious satire of one of our most revered cultural institutions, Killing Freud combines impeccable and truly original scholarship with great wit. Todd Dufresne, a distinguished Freud scholar, has written a remarkable and delightful book which joyously affirms the death of psychoanalysis without trying to prove "Why Freud Was Wrong". People will read this book for the sheer fun of it, but they will also learn a lot about psychoanalysis and its role in twentieth-century culture at large." --Mikkel Borch-Jacobsen, author of The Freudian Subject and Remembering Anna O
"Killing Freud is a major attack on both the culture of theory and the culture of therapy, demonstrating that many of the most cherished truths of psychoanalysis are based upon misreadings, misunderstandings and blatant falsifications. Witty, provocative and admirably erudite, this is required reading for anyone with a critical - or in other words sceptical - concern for the history of psychoanalysis and the human sciences." --David Macey, author of The Penguin Dictionary of Critical Theory
“A timely, important, and interesting book, written in an engaging style readily accessible to non-specialists.” —MIND
' I just spent a couple of enjoyable hours with Todd Dufresne's new book Killing Freud .......I couldn't resist cheering the show he puts on.....Because what Dufresne sets out to do is dance on Freud's grave. "How did this awful man and his worse ideas ever get themselves taken seriously? What in god's name were people thinking?" -- these are a couple of the questions Dufresne asks. " - http://www.2blowhards.com
"Dufresne does not attempt a demolition of Freud, though he is equipped to do that. He concentrates his fire on weak points in the enemy's defences: the way Freud systematically distorted his findings in case-histories, and the way psychoanalysis, as a profession, is a fiercely jealous guild. There is a wickedly funny section on the literal-cum-metaphoric ice-skating of Ernest Jones, Freud's English promoter and "official" biographer; and, more playful still, a supposedly unpublished memoir by an orthodox practitioner, forced to admit that psychoanalysis is nothing if not "a bad habit". Killing Freud requires some knowledge of its subject-matters: Jacques Derrida and Jacques Lacan, as much as Freud. While it is not a book for he uninitiated, for those minded to follow the Freud Wars, its erudition offers sure-fire caviar. " - The Independent, UK, December 2003
"Killing Freud is a major attack on both the culture of theory and the culture of therapy, demonstrating that many of the most cherished truths of psychoanalysis are based upon misreadings, misunderstandings and blatant falsifications. Witty, provocative and admirably erudite, this is required reading for anyone with a critical - or in other words sceptical - concern for the history of psychoanalysis and the human sciences." --David Macey, author of The Penguin Dictionary of Critical Theory
“A timely, important, and interesting book, written in an engaging style readily accessible to non-specialists.” —MIND
' I just spent a couple of enjoyable hours with Todd Dufresne's new book Killing Freud .......I couldn't resist cheering the show he puts on.....Because what Dufresne sets out to do is dance on Freud's grave. "How did this awful man and his worse ideas ever get themselves taken seriously? What in god's name were people thinking?" -- these are a couple of the questions Dufresne asks. " - http://www.2blowhards.com
"Dufresne does not attempt a demolition of Freud, though he is equipped to do that. He concentrates his fire on weak points in the enemy's defences: the way Freud systematically distorted his findings in case-histories, and the way psychoanalysis, as a profession, is a fiercely jealous guild. There is a wickedly funny section on the literal-cum-metaphoric ice-skating of Ernest Jones, Freud's English promoter and "official" biographer; and, more playful still, a supposedly unpublished memoir by an orthodox practitioner, forced to admit that psychoanalysis is nothing if not "a bad habit". Killing Freud requires some knowledge of its subject-matters: Jacques Derrida and Jacques Lacan, as much as Freud. While it is not a book for he uninitiated, for those minded to follow the Freud Wars, its erudition offers sure-fire caviar. " - The Independent, UK, December 2003
"Killing Freud begins by reviewing previous studies of the case of Anna O.... Dufresne depicts an unscientific and shamelessly ambitious Freud, eager to found psychoanalysis at anyone's expense."- Naomi Morgenstern,
“Killing Freud begins by reviewing previous studies of the case of Anna O.... Dufresne depicts an unscientific and shamelessly ambitious Freud, eager to found psychoanalysis at anyone’s expense.”- Naomi Morgenstern,
About the Author
Todd Dufresne is Chair of the Department of Philosophy at Lakehead University and is editor of Returns of the French Freud and Freud Under Analysis, and author of Tales From the Freudian Crypt. He is currently working on the origin of the psycho-neuroses and on the sensational 1923 Chicago trial of Leopold and Loeb, at which Freudian ideas first began to influence criminology.
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Most Helpful Customer Reviews
13 of 22 people found the following review helpful:
2.0 out of 5 stars
Killing a dead horse...enough already!,
By Robert (Melbourne) - See all my reviews
This review is from: Killing Freud: 20th Century Culture and the Death of Psychoanalysis (Hardcover)
This book is a concatenation of rather second rate conference papers covering the unbelievably hackneyed topic of Freud's oft-reported death. Honestly, what next - "killing Elvis"? If you enjoy books about the continual burying of Freud then read Crews or Masson - much better written. Wrong, but better written....of course much of what Freud wrote WAS bunk. Even psychoanalysts agree about that. But gosh, give him a break! He was the first one on the scene and his work has been revised by succesive generations of analysts (Winnicott, Klein, Bion etc). Perhaps the author might next try and do what Freud did; produce a model of the mind that explained psychopathology, many aspects of existential phenomena and creat a language of the mind that entered the every day lexicon. While Freud might be dead, his ideas (ego, projection, identification, libido etc, etc) most certainly are NOT!
12 of 21 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
Killing me softly,
By
This review is from: Killing Freud: 20th Century Culture and the Death of Psychoanalysis (Hardcover)
A tour de force. With this witty book, Dufresne joins the ranks of the sharpest critics of Freud. Put it in your library next to more somber works by scholars such as Roazen, Sulloway, Cioffi, Swales, Holt. The writing is much too wickedly funny to take the title, "Killing Freud," literally. After all, Freud himself, as Dufresne slyly notes, was fond of "killing" himself with asides like, "Moi, je ne suis pas une Freudiste" --"Me, Sigmund Freud, I don't follow him/me. Alienated from himself in this way, from the self-same, Freud was always his own impossible condition of psychoanalysis ..." (Dufresne, p. 70). What a joker!
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