In the Freud Archives (Paperback) (ISBN-13: 9781590170274)

Includes an afterword by the author

In the Freud Archives tells the story of an unlikely encounter among three men: K. R. Eissler, the venerable doyen of psychoanalysis; Jeffrey Moussaieff Masson, a flamboyant, restless forty-two-year-old Sanskrit scholar turned psychoanalyst turned virulent anti-Freudian; and Peter Swales, a mischievous thirty-five-year-old former assistant to the Rolling Stones and self-taught Freud scholar. At the center of their Oedipal drama are the Sigmund Freud Archives--founded, headed, and jealously guarded by Eissler--whose sealed treasure gleams and beckons to the community of Freud scholarship as if it were the Rhine gold.

Janet Malcolm's fascinating book first appeared some twenty years ago, when it was immediately recognized as a rare and remarkable work of nonfiction. A story of infatuation and disappointment, betrayal and revenge, In the Freud Archives is essentially a comedy. But the powerful presence of Freud himself and the harsh bracing air of his ideas about unconscious life hover over the narrative and give it a tragic dimension.

Author: Janet Malcolm
ISBN-10: 159017027X
ISBN-13: 9781590170274
Publisher: New York Review of Books
Language: English
Published: 11/30/2002
Pages: 176
Format: Paperback
Weight: 0.47lbs
Size: 8.00h x 5.12w x 0.45d

Review Citation(s):
New York Times 01/12/2003 pg. 20