Sigmund Freud

However much his work has been reviled or contested, Sigmund Freud remains one of the most significant thinkers of the last one hundred and fifty years. He founded psychoanalysis, and his vision of human behaviour and the unconscious mind provided a compelling paradigm for the understanding of society for much of the twentieth century.

In this gripping new account, Matt ffytche draws on the latest research into Freud's impact and historical context, making the case for his continuing relevance in analysing the vagaries, resistances, and desires of the human mind. Engaging and accessible, Sigmund Freud appeals to both students and the general reader, as well as anyone fascinated with mental health, dreams, and the hidden depths of human experience.

This stylishly succinct biography leads readers through signal episodes in Freud's life, with rich insight into crucial historical contexts: the vagaries of antisemitism, the sharpening of gender conflicts, the disillusionments wrought by world war. The book ingeniously embeds explications of Freud's most resonant concepts, not just the unconscious, the ego, and the vicissitudes of Oedipus, but also such enduringly pertinent phenomena as ambivalence, deferred effects, defence mechanisms, intimate rivalries, magical thinking, and repetition compulsion. A compelling, highly original argument about why Freud can and must matter to us now, in our so profoundly troubled present, ffytche's Sigmund Freud is a marvellous achievement. — Dagmar Herzog, author of Cold War Freud: Psychoanalysis in an Age of Catastrophes

Vivid, engrossing, and historically accurate, this is now the book of choice for everyone wishing to acquire a broad understanding of Freud's life, his works, and the sociocultural context in which he set out as a researcher in neurology and rose to fame as the conquistador of the deepest recesses of the human mind. — Dany Nobus, professor of psychoanalytic psychology, Brunel University London