Sigmund Freud’s life bridged the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, and his reputation and influence have endured, even intensified, in the twenty-first. Often referred to as “the father of psychoanalysis,” Freud did, in fact, conceive of many of its defining characteristics: he was the original advocate of the “talking cure,” and discovered--or, some argue, invented--the human unconscious.

Kramer’s take on Freud is at once critical and sympathetic: he recognizes what is archaic in Freud’s work and also what endures, interpreting him as not only a pioneer, but a writer whose work will survive among the classics of our literature.