Freud's Women

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 Salomete 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.

Sigmund Freud's ideas permeate our everyday thinking about life, love, gender, the family, and the relation between the sexes. These ideas took on their shape and substance in the same period that "the woman question" became a burning issue. Sometimes championed as a liberator of women, Freud has also been virulently attacked for his theories of the feminine and for elevating his personal prejudices to the height of universal pronouncement.

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 Salomete 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.

Booknews

Novelist Appignanesi and Freud scholar Forrester (Cambridge U.) analyze how women family, friends, patients, and followers (some pictured) served as key guides in Freud's life despite his theoretical perplexity over femininity. Originally published by Basic Books. Annotation c. Book News, Inc., Portland, OR (booknews.com)

Lisa Appignanesi

Lisa Appignanesi is a novelist and writer. Her fiction includes Paris Requiem, Sanctuary, The Dead of Winter, and The Things We Do for Love, among other novels. She is also the author of Losing the Dead: A Family Memoir, a biographical portrait of Simone de Beauvoir, and Cabaret.

John Forrester

John Forrester, Professor of History and Philosophy of the Sciences at Cambridge University, is the author of Truth Games, Dispatches from the Freud Wars, The Seductions of Psychoanalysis, Language and the Origins of Psychoanalysis, and The Freudian Century.