Reading Freud: Explorations and Entertainments

This book is a frolic in the Freudian pasture. The previous (and sole review) is by virtue of the evidence within itself, misleading and erroneous. Check out Gay's own biography(he's German and "Gay" is not his original name) and it all becomes a lot clearer. (Freud is much more an open read to the German reader than anyone else - highfalutin' neoclassical terms like "Ego" come from the mere German "das Ich", and the mysterious Id" is simply "das Es" - so clear and immediately grasped in the original German!) The other other reviewer writes of Freud's ideas: "Yes, they're a hundred+ years out of date at this time . . . " With all due respect - that is poppycock! So Darwin is 150 years "out of date" and Newton and Plato - well, let's look at the newer models ONLY and ignore them as they are long beyond their "expiration date"!!! Read this book for pleasure, for the gifted writing of Peter Gay, who delightfully expounds the genius and unbounded curiosity of Freud.

If you care what happened to Freud, this book is historically relevant and will fill in some personal details. It reads quickly and well. I read it in tandem with a book on F's relationship with Gustav Mahler, also a trip. I never finished Peter Gay's Life of Freud Freud: A Life for Our Time but I believe that was the unvarnished truth, or at least as much as we knew in the nineteen-eighties. In it, Freud did not come of anywhere near as likable as he does in his writings. Now I am wondering if that portrait was un-necessarily harsh. I would like to like Freud: Though some of his ideas do not work for me, I feel others have been seminal in the development of psychiatry and psychology. I think therapists should have some acquaintance with him and Carl Jung. Yes, they're a hundred+ years out of date at this time, but what we don't know about them can come back to haunt us. Nevertheless, who am I to judge(haven't even been to India)?