FRAGMENTS OF AN ANALYSIS WITH FREUD

by Joseph Wortis ‧ RELEASE DATE: N/A

This may be an important, if small, contribution to the growing mass of first hand material about Sigmund Freud, of which the biography by Jones and Freud's correspondence with Fliess are a major portion. In about 1934, the then young medical student, Dr. Wortis, encouraged by Havelock Ellis and Adolf Meyer, went to Vienna and became the subject of an analysis by Freud. He was admittedly non-neurotic, and this analysis was what Freud called a ""didactic"" one. This book consists of accurate notes on the interviews set down immediately after they had taken place. It reveals a crotchety old Freud, nervous over his increasing cancer of the throat, the growing threat of fascism, unduly sensitive to any criticism, narrow, jealous, unfriendly. It also reveals Wortis as a very assured young man, not at all ""in touch with his subconscious"", and an unfit subject for the psychoanalytic technique. The whole record of the interviews is woeful- consisting of bickering argument on a rather picayune level and revealing very little of Freud's creative insight. The book ends with a chapter in which Wortis states his own present attitude toward psychoanalysis- the growing need for more research and for a more socialized point of view-and his mature judgment tempers the harshly critical note which the interviews themselves reach.... A book for a professional market largely, and of course of reference value.

Pub Date: N/A

ISBN: N/A

Page Count: -

Publisher: Simon & Schuster

Review Posted Online: N/A

Kirkus Reviews Issue: June 15, 1954

Categories: NONFICTION