Description: An engaging biographical introduction to Sigmund Freud, contextualizing his theoretical development within the vibrant and tumultuous social, political, and intellectual climate of early-20th-century Vienna.
Brief description: Stephen Frosh is a Fellow of the Academy of Social Sciences, an Academic Associate of the British Psychoanalytical Society, a Founding Member of the Association of Psychosocial Studies, and an Honorary Member of the Institute of Group Analysis. He is Emeritus Professor in the Department of Psychosocial Studies at Birkbeck, University of London, UK, and was a Visiting Professor at the University of Witwatersrand, South Africa, and at the University of São Paulo, Brazil. He is the author of over 20 books on psychosocial studies and psychoanalysis, including A Brief Introduction to Psychoanalytic Theory; Psychoanalysis Outside the Clinic; The Politics of Psychoanalysis; Hate and the Jewish Science: Anti-Semitism, Nazism and Psychoanalysis; Hauntings; Those Who Come After: Postmemory, Acknowledgement and Forgiveness and most recently, Antisemitism and Racism: Ethical Challenges for Psychoanalysis, published by Bloomsbury in 2023. He is co-editor of the Palgrave Handbook of Psychosocial Studies and the Routledge International Handbook of Psychoanalysis and Jewish Studies. His most recent book is How to be Real: A Survival Guide in Challenging Times.
Review Quotes:
"Engaging, illuminating and wondrously erudite, this compact book packs more into its study of Freud than many a library shelf. Frosh juggles biography, history, and Freud's evolving ideas with the mastery of a theoretician who is also a clinician and a consummate teacher." --Lisa Appignanesi OBE FRSL, former Chair, Freud Museum London, UK
"Stephen Frosh's Freud Baedeker provides the best concise tour of Sigmund Freud's life and thought available. Clear, shorn of jargon, Frosh shows here his mastery of the complexity of psychoanalysis by making the evolution of Freud's thinking transparent." --Sander Gilman, Distinguished Professor of Arts and Sciences and Professor of Psychiatry, Emeritus, Emory University, USA