I really enjoy this book. Louis Breger takes no party and stays neutral in his judgements. He (being a phychoanalist himself) analyses Freud's behavior and work, even his relationship with everyone who was close to him. He never forgets to maintain you in the historical context, which is really helpful since Freud's work was influenced (up to a certain degree) by the environment he was experiencing. Freud was (no doubt about it) one of the most influencing characters of recent history, his work is still echoing today, and controversies are still arising around his work. He prepared the terrain for much of todays psychoanalysis. I highly recommend this book as a deep biography about a deep man.

Breger's description of Freud's life is most apt for those curious about Freud's personal, familial, and intellectual relationships during his youth and through the development of the psychoanalytic movement. Here we see Freud the hard-working father, but also the autocratic leader of his movement, the members of which had to be absolutely loyal to him or risk expulsion. I had two problems with the book. First, Breger's account of nearly all of Freud's relationships fits a single pattern (first, loyalty to Freud, then intellectual independence, followed by rejection from the moevement), which makes reading predictable and ultimately repetitive. Surely many of Freud's relationships differed from this pattern in important respects--respects de-emphasized in this account. Second, it is unclear from this biography what original and permanent contributions Freud made at all to the history of ideas. Breger's account makes Freud out to be wrong-headed in almost every aspect of his thought, lodging convenient criticisms of hindsight which may have been unavailable in Freud's day. In short, the book is not the best for an introduction to Freud as a thinker. It is probably better for those who have read other biographies of Freud and want another perspective.

Many years ago, an old teacher of mine commented to me that the published writings about Sigmund Freud and psychoanalysis could fill a suburban library. This could be a slight exaggeration, but the biographies and published essays that one can find on a university library catalogue, for example, reach a remarkable number. Even today, the interest in the man and his work continues unabated, more in the general humanities, however, than psychology itself. What is this unrelenting fascination about Freud that draws so many people to his life and work? This is a hard question to answer, but an interesting one to consider. In the latest contribution to the Freud canon, ~Freud- Darkness in the Midst of Vision~ Louis Breger attempts a somewhat new interpretation of Freud and psychoanalysis, and a successful one.

In the 'Background and Sources' at the back of the text, Breger writes an interesting comment: he states that there are basically three camps or perspectives of the man - the first are the 'fiercely' loyal combatants, the defenders of psychoanalytic orthodoxy; Freud's words are considered gosple and no divergence is permitted. In the second camp are the sharp and brutal critics, who dismiss Freud and psychoanalysis in its entirety. The third category (where Breger places himself) are not worshiping sycophants or radical critics, but those who see the significance of Freud's work, and acknowledge his contributions with a balanced assessment of the man and psychoanalysis in general. This book manages to capture the spirit of the third cartegory with brilliance of insight, objectivity and compassion.

I've read many accounts of Freud and the history of psychoanalysis from hagiography, (Ernest Jones' three-volume mythology) to chatty, uninformed rumour mongering, (Paul Ferris -Dr. Freud A Life) and found Breger's to be the most clinically informed and fair of them all.

Breger set out to dismantle the many myths surrounding the history of Freud and psychoananlysis. This book is straightforward historical revisionism at its most readable form. He writes of the origins of psychoanalysis and its intellectual development against its historical milieu, that gives the reader a true context in which the movement was born and the reasons why it catapulted into international popularity after the First World War. The text cuts through the folklore and the intentionally generated romance of the subject, revealing a clear well-researched account, which remains as out of the ordinary as the myths themselves.

Even with all of Freud's faults and flaws of personality, his steel-like dogmatism and refusal to accept any further developments (contrary to his own) from his followers or divergence from his questionable theories, continues to incite interest and fascination generation after generation. It is his utter strength of personality that was his true genius, that reaches out from the past and grabs our attention. To dismiss this highly original thinker is a mistake. And Louis Breger's ~Freud - Darkness in the Midst of Vision~ emphasises this fact in a lucid, fresh and graceful manner.

I am not expert in psychoanalysis. What drew me into this book was the humanization of this slightly stooped, ambitious, clearly brilliant, altogether bourgeois, autocratic, but - yes - great man. Breger shows us, mostly sympathetically, a thoroughly human man, with all the foibles and prejudices of his time. But Breger also shows us the other side of the coin - a fanatic drive for personal fame and a chilling cruelty to all of the many who even slightly questioned his drive for mythic status. We realize the revolution in the late 19th and early 20th centuries wrought by Freud's brilliant, if now widely regarded as deeply flawed, insights into the nature of the mind. Indeed, that there is such a thing as a subconscious, an id ("the horse"), ego ("the man on horseback"), and superego (the rider's "internal voice"). There are so many famous Freudian phrases that virtually all his basic theses have "passed into the common domain", almost biblically, in Breger's typically serviceable prose.

I would recommend this aptly titled "Freud: darkness in the midst of vision" to any interested lay person, not for critiques of Freudian theories, though they are well-presented and solidly researched. Rather, I recommend this for Breger's at times soaring descriptions of Freud's utterly fascinating inner demons and his tempestuous relationships with colleagues: the 'Napoleon of neuroses' Charcot; Brucke of the "terrifying blue eyes"; his 'beautiful' Ernst Fleischl, whom he bathed, and whose photo was the only one in his consulting room, 45 years after Fleischl's death. The [narcotics], the nicotine addiction, the erotic Jung, the dissenter Adler, the hagiographer Anna Freud, and on and on --explosive relationships powerfully described. Through it all, Breger mostly succeeds in giving us a balanced criticism of Freud's ideas and, more excitingly, an intimate view of the deeply complex man. The rare photos, integrated into the text, are a treat.

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