Mortal Secrets
Freud, Vienna and the Discovery of the Modern Mind
-
- 16,99 €
-
- 16,99 €
Publisher Description
Like Sarah Bakewell's How to Live and Andrea Wulf's Magnificent Rebels, Mortal Secrets is a lively and accessible portrait of a major figure - Sigmund Freud - and the unprecedented era of creativity that shaped his ideas
Some cities are like stars. When the conditions are right, they ignite, and they burn with such fierce intensity that they outshine all their rivals. From 1890 and through the early years of the 20th century, Vienna became a dazzling beacon. The city was powered by an unprecedented number of extraordinary people - artists Klimt and Schiele, thinkers such as Theodor Herzl, and fashion icons like the glamorous Empress Sisi. Conversations in coffee houses and salons spurred advances in almost every area of human endeavour: science, politics, philosophy, and the arts. The influence of early 20th century Vienna is still detectable all around us - but the place where it is at its strongest is in our heads. The way we think about ourselves has been largely determined by Vienna's most celebrated resident: Sigmund Freud. Mortal Secrets is the story of Freud's life, Vienna's golden age, and an essential reappraisal of Freud's legacy.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
Psychologist Tallis (The Act of Living) takes a wide-ranging and fascinating look at how Sigmund Freud shaped and was shaped by the cultural ferment of late 19th- and early 20th-century Vienna. Tracking Freud from his upbringing in a small Moravian village to his enshrinement as the father of psychoanalysis, Tallis spares no detail in depicting his subject's many sides. Assigning "unique" literary merit to Freud's writings, Tallis asserts that The Interpretation of Dreams can be read "as a first-person, experimental novel" in the vein of works by James Joyce and Marcel Proust. Trivial anecdotes (Freud was scrupulous about his appearance and "visited the barber every day") sit alongside more substantial character analyses, as when Tallis reveals Freud to be "capable of manipulation and deceit" on the one hand and intellectual cooperation on the other. Throughout, Tallis notes that psychology was one of many fields—including math, science, medicine, art, and philosophy—undergoing enormous changes in Vienna at the time. Examining Freud in the context of such intellectual movements as romanticism and modernism, Tallis observes that Freud was a revolutionary thinker not always because his ideas were new, but because he amalgamated and interpreted his predecessors' insights in innovative ways. Stunning in its breadth and depth, this is a magisterial treatment of a towering thinker. Clare Alexander, Aitken Alexander.
