Mark Edmundson

When Hitler invaded Vienna in the winter of 1938, Sigmund Freud, old and desperately ill, was among the city's 175,000 Jews dreading Nazi occupation. For their part, the Nazis hated Freud with a particular vehemence, not least for what they called his 'soul-destroying glorification of the instinctual life.' In this dramatic narrative, Mark Edmundson traces the oddly converging lives of Hitler and Freud, focusing especially on Freud's last two years. This was the period during which, with the help of Marie Bonaparte, he was at last rescued from Vienna and brought safely to London, where he was honoured and feted as he never had been during his long, controversial life. Staring down certain death, Freud - in typical fashion - did not enjoy his fame. Instead he wrote his most provocative book yet, Moses and Monotheism, in which he debunked all monotheistic religions and questioned the legacy of the great Jewish leader, Moses. Edmundson probes Freud's ideas about secular death and the rise of fascism and fundamentalism, and he finally grapples with the post-Freudian demise of psychoanalysis up to the present day, when religious fundamentalism is once again shaping world events.

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