Freud's Patients: A Book of Lives

In a series of compelling portraits, Mikkel Borch-Jacobsen explores the lives of the individuals behind Freud's case histories, including Ida Bauer, Ernst Lanzer, and Sergius Pankejeff, shedding light on their circumstances, treatments, and outcomes. The book also reveals a darker and more complex Freud than is commonly portrayed, showing him as his patients, friends, and families saw him.

Format: Hardback
Length: 240 pages
Publication date: 13 September 2021
Publisher: Reaktion Books

Freud's case histories are well-known, featuring characters such as Dora, the Rat Man, and the Wolf Man. However, what do we know about the individuals behind these pseudonyms? Do we understand the circumstances that brought them to Freud's consulting room, or how they fared after their treatments? What about those patients about whom Freud wrote nothing or very little, such as Pauline Silberstein, who threw herself from the fourth floor of her analyst's building; Elfriede Hirschfeld, Freud's grand-patient and chief tormentor; the fashionable architect Karl Mayreder; the psychotic millionaire Carl Liebmann; and many others? In an engrossing sequence of portraits, Mikkel Borch-Jacobsen offers the stories of these men and women, some comic, many tragic, all deeply moving. In total, thirty-eight lives tell us as much about Freud's clinical practice as his celebrated case studies, revealing a darker and more complex Freud than is usually portrayed. The doctor as his patients, their friends, and their families saw him.

Freud's case histories are well-known, featuring characters such as Dora, the Rat Man, and the Wolf Man. However, what do we know about the individuals behind these pseudonyms? Do we understand the circumstances that brought them to Freud's consulting room, or how they fared after their treatments? What about those patients about whom Freud wrote nothing or very little, such as Pauline Silberstein, who threw herself from the fourth floor of her analyst's building; Elfriede Hirschfeld, Freud's grand-patient and chief tormentor; the fashionable architect Karl Mayreder; the psychotic millionaire Carl Liebmann; and many others? In an engrossing sequence of portraits, Mikkel Borch-Jacobsen offers the stories of these men and women, some comic, many tragic, all deeply moving. In total, thirty-eight lives tell us as much about Freud's clinical practice as his celebrated case studies, revealing a darker and more complex Freud than is usually portrayed. The doctor as his patients, their friends, and their families saw him.

Weight: 642g
Dimension: 164 x 241 x 33 (mm)
ISBN-13: 9781789144550