Freud: The Mind of the Moralist
.jpg) Cover of the first edition | |
| Author | Philip Rieff |
|---|---|
| Country | United States |
| Language | English |
| Subject | Sigmund Freud |
| Published | 1959 (Anchor Books) |
| Media type | Print (hardcover and paperback) |
| Pages | 441 (1961 edition) |
| ISBN | 978-0226716398 |
Freud: The Mind of the Moralist (1959; second edition 1961) is a book about Sigmund Freud by Philip Rieff.[1] Susan Sontag, Rieff's wife, contributed to the book to such an extent that she has been considered an unofficial co-author.[2]
Summary
Rieff interprets Freud as a conservative, a perspective which became predominant by the 1940s, when psychoanalysis had lost its initial shocking novelty. He portrays Freud as "heir to the tradition of Montaigne, Burton, Hobbes, and La Rouchefoucauld, a man deeply impressed by the limitations of the intellect and the obstinacy of the passions." Rieff saw Freud as an advocate of psychic compromise, who believed that people should make the best of an inevitably unhappy fate. Rieff admired Freud for what he saw as his sober realism.[3]
Scholarly reception
Freud: The Mind of the Moralist established Rieff's reputation.[2] Literary critic Frederick Crews calls it the most helpful book about Freud for "placing psychoanalysis in the context of the intellectual and scientific history and the ethical assumptions from which it emerged."[4] Paul Robinson calls Rieff the most erudite and forceful of Freud's sympathetic interpreters on the right.[3] Historian Peter Gay, in his Freud: A Life for Our Time (1988), calls Rieff's work "an elegant extended essay eminently worth reading."[5]
Philosopher Jeffrey Abramson compares Freud: The Mind of the Moralist to Herbert Marcuse's Eros and Civilization (1955), Norman O. Brown's Life Against Death (1959), Paul Ricœur's Freud and Philosophy (1965), and Jürgen Habermas's Knowledge and Human Interests (1968), arguing that they jointly placed Freud at the center of moral and philosophical inquiry.[6]
Historian of science Roger Smith writes that Freud: The Mind of the Moralist is a widely read study of Freud "in relation to changes in the wider culture".[7]
References
Footnotes
- ↑ Rieff 1961. pp. viii, xi.
- 1 2 Rollyson 2002. p. 40.
- 1 2 Robinson 1990. pp. 147-148.
- ↑ Crews 1975. p. 189.
- ↑ Gay 1995. p. 744.
- ↑ Abramson 1986. p. ix.
- ↑ Smith 1997. p. 988.
Bibliography
- Books
- Abramson, Jeffrey B. (1986). Liberation and Its Limits: The Moral and Political Thought of Freud. Boston: Beacon Press. ISBN 0-8070-2913-0.
- Crews, Frederick (1975). Out of My System: Psychoanalysis, Ideology, and Critical Method. Oxford University Press. ISBN 0-19-501947-4.
- Gay, Peter (1995). Freud: A Life for Our Time. Papermac. ISBN 0-333-48638-2.
- Rieff, Philip (1961). Freud: The Mind of the Moralist. Anchor Books.
- Robinson, Paul (1990). The Freudian Left. Ithaca and London: Cornell University Press. ISBN 0-8014-9716-7.
- Rollyson, Carl; Paddock, Lisa (2002). Susan Sontag: The Making of an Icon. New York: W. W. Norton & Company. ISBN 0-393-04928-0.
- Smith, Roger (1997). The Norton History of the Human Sciences. New York: W. W. Norton & Company. ISBN 0-393-31733-1.