FREUD AND HIS EARLY CIRCLE

by Vincent Brome ‧ RELEASE DATE: Feb. 27, 1967

Rather than a comprehensive survey of Various psychoanalytic schools, this is a study of the early pioneers' personal and interpersonal difficulties, and the issues which arose in their quarrelsome exchanges. Brome (who has biographed H.G. Wells, Frank Harris and Aneurin Bevan) supplements standard sources like Jones and Freud himself with interviews, newly-excavated correspondence, and recent memoirs by Jung and Lou Andreas-Salome. The book runs from Freud's first clash with Fliess to the final break with Ferenczi. In between we get intricate debate, multiple pettiness, and spectacular asperity as the Wednesday Circle gave way to the cabalistic Committee. Re Freud-Jung, Brome concludes that Jung was not anti-Semitic despite his Nazi associations, and recounts some unpublished comments by Freud on the Jewish personality. Brome's ""post-mortem on motives"" indicates that Freud's early concern with the ancestry of his ideas changed into a neurotic fear of rivalry. Brome frequently indulges in this sort of over-obvious psychologizing (""The circle became...an enlarged example of the Oedipal situation"") but the material adds up to a fascinating petite histoire.

Pub Date: Feb. 27, 1967

ISBN: N/A

Page Count: -

Publisher: Morrow

Review Posted Online: N/A

Kirkus Reviews Issue: Feb. 1, 1967

Categories: NONFICTION