Description
Book SynopsisPresents the psychoanalyst's therapeutic directives against his more visionary impulses in a magisterial comparative study of such writers as Shakespeare, Wordsworth, Emerson, and Keats. Cross-fertilizing psychological doctrine with the literary canon, this volume offers an understanding of Freud's writings on the self.
Trade Review"Marvelous.... Edmundson's book offers an extraordinary challenge both to practicing analysts and to a scholarly community which all too uncomplainingly inhabits and reinforces the Freudian paradigm of interpretation. Edmundson reinvents an adventurous and dissident Freud as an antidote to... weary psychoanalytic common-places." - Malcolm Bowie, Raritan "This book takes a distinguished place in the ongoing effort to recontextualize Freud by stressing the literary, rather than the scientific roots and character of his theory." - Virginia Quarterly Review "A great book.... Wherever Freud is taught, this should be among the key secondary texts students should be advised to consult. Those in psychoanalytic training now realize they must read Freud's writings historically as literature, and Edmundson's approach will be particularly helpful." - Adam Phillips"
