SIGMUND FREUD: Exploring the Unconscious

Muckenhoupt gives a balanced account of Freud's life, work, and times, describing his childhood, studies, mentors, experiments, theories, family life, publications, and feuds, and, in an epilogue, provides some historical perspective. This title in the Oxford Portraits of Science series is a readable biography, but what readers will find memorable is the time in which Freud lived. The author explains that scientific method was in its infancy. Treatments included hypnosis, hydrotherapy (water therapy), cocaine therapy, and faradization (electric shock). Freud struggled to gain fame for his treatment of female ""hysterics,"" an illness that has ceased to exist; he practiced medicine at a time when a friend and mentor postulated the ""nasal-genital theory."" Muckenhoupt recounts some of Freud's famous cases and methods, notably, allowing patients to use free association. Black-and-white photographs are used throughout this good introduction to a still controversial figure.