A Dream of Undying Fame: How Freud Betrayed His Mentor and Invented Psychoanalysis

In this follow-up to his biography Freud: Darkness in the Midst of Vision, Cal. Tech psychoanalysis professor Breger focuses on the work of Freud's collaborator, Josef Breuer, a well-recognized Viennese neurologist who was Freud's mentor and the co-author of Freud's first ""groundbreaking"" book, Studies in Hysteria, laying out the ""essential features of psychoanalysis."" It was after that that Freud, ""in his quest for fame,"" disparaged Breuer and abandoned him completely. Where their views subsequently diverged-in the centrality of sexuality and the Oedipus complex-Breuer would ultimately be proven correct. Breuer believed that there were many contributory factors to hysteria, and called Freud's model an ""overvaluation of sexuality""; for his part, Breger calls the rise of Freudian theory ""one of the tragedies of psychoanalysis,"" turning psychology into ""a cult-like 'cause,'"" and leaving it to therapists ""outside the psychoanalytical mainstream"" to make the new discoveries (setting back, for instance, recognition of post-traumatic stress disorder by 50 years). This volume should interest people with a toe in the history of psychology, or those seeking to better understand the history of their own diagnosis.