Analyze This

The Viennese doctor's insights stemmed from his misunderstandings of himself.

(Steffen Kugler / Dpa / Corbis)

FREUD

Inventor of the Modern Mind

By Peter D. Kramer

Atlas/HarperCollins. 213 pp. $21.95

The initial impression conveyed by Peter Kramer's short biography of Freud is jarring. The book is part of a new series of "Eminent Lives," and its subtitle credits Freud -- not Einstein, Picasso or Kafka -- with the invention of the modern mind. And yet, drawing on information that was uncovered in the 1980s, Kramer opens with a damning picture of Freud pressuring a young American patient to leave his wife, marry a wealthy woman and persuade her to donate money to the psychoanalytic movement. Freud is depicted in this debacle as an unsavory, narcissistic character who deceives himself, lies to others, diagnoses incompetently and -- most distressingly -- is willing to sacrifice the welfare of patients for financial gain. Far from indulging in hagiography, Kramer seems engaged in pathography -- the unfrocking of a false saint.

Though the outlines of Freud's life are known to most readers, no biographical account can omit them. In brisk and vividly written chapters, we encounter Freud as the favored son of his mother; a talented student of whom much is expected (not least by himself); the young medical researcher who wanders among subspecialties; his initially unsuccessful efforts to attain fame, on the one hand, and his courting of disaster -- owing to his uncritical embrace of cocaine -- on the other; the faithful though remote husband and father; the colleague of Joseph Breuer, with whom he explores the intriguing symptoms of hysteria and the power of the "talking cure"; the odd friendship with the wacky Wilhelm Fliess; the once-in-a-lifetime discovery of dreams as the "royal road" to mental life; the copious articles and books that, while controversial, formed modern consciousness; the struggle to build psychoanalysis as a field; the dramatic escape from Nazism in 1938; and the painful death from cancer in London the following year.

In reconciling Freud's remarkable achievements with his flaws as a person and as a scientist, scholar and therapist, Kramer employs two techniques. First, he uses Freud's own psychoanalytic insights to explain his personality and behavior. Wielding the tools of the well-informed biographer and expert clinician, Kramer pinpoints the sources in Freud's own life of his belief in sibling rivalry and the Oedipal complex; his abiding interests in anxiety, panic and obsessiveness; his fascination with the therapeutic processes of transference and countertransference; his increasing attention, with age and calamitous world events, to the power of aggression and the death instinct. Even the focus on sexuality is attributed to Freud's own fantasies and frustrations. Contrary to what Freud wished the world to believe, his achievements came not from observations or successes in the therapeutic chamber, but rather from his own understandings and misunderstandings of himself.

Kramer's second technique is itself two-pronged. In reviewing Freud's various discoveries and claims, Kramer is extremely critical of the data on which they rest. He argues that Freud lacked evidence for his claims about the meaning of dreams, the unconscious, jokes, slips of the tongue, hysteric symptoms, phobias, childhood sexuality and numerous other phenomena that he claimed to have illuminated. Moreover, Kramer draws on current understandings of such conditions and symptoms -- now seen as due to biological causes or to much simpler antecedents -- to challenge Freud's achievement further.

But then, in what appears a complete turnaround, Kramer goes on to credit Freud with powerful, mind-changing insights. As he summarizes, "Stripped down, Freud's categories may sound by turns commonplace and arbitrary. But because he told compelling stories, because he legitimated defiance of convention, because he argued vehemently for an ever-changing set of viewpoints, Freud started a discussion and set its terms. He popularized psychology and gave rise, ultimately, to our own era, the age of self-examination and memoir." And so, he merits both unsparing critique and sincere praise.

As a sometime biographer of Freud, I am persuaded by Kramer's account of the role played by Freud's life in the development of his ideas. Freud emerges as a prototypical projecter -- one who discerns in others what is actually present in oneself. I am less convinced by Kramer's critiques of Freud's various discoveries. Kramer devotes attention to Freud's most outlandish claims, while rarely citing the strongest supporting evidence. No reader of Kramer alone would appreciate the extent to which Freud airs doubts, responds to criticisms, admits his changes of mind and presents extensive transcripts that readers can judge for themselves. Also, it seems unrealistic to expect Freud to have anticipated the results of a century's study of phenomena, many of which he was the first to identify and ponder.

Still, in the end, Kramer succeeds in reconciling the two Freuds -- the inventor of the modern mind and the false saint -- and that is a considerable achievement. ·

Howard Gardner teaches psychology at the Harvard Graduate School of Education. He is the author of "Creating Minds" and "Extraordinary Minds."