The Death of Sigmund Freud: The Legacy of His Last Days

Mark Edmundson

ago 2010 · Bloomsbury Publishing USA

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When Hitler invaded Austria in March of 1938, Sigmund Freud was among the 175,000 Viennese Jews dreading Nazi occupation. Though Freud was near the end of his life-eighty-one years old, battling cancer of the jaw-and Hitler's rise on the world stage was just beginning, the fates of these two historical giants were nonetheless intertwined. In this gripping and revelatory historical narrative, Mark Edmundson traces Hitler and Freud's oddly converging lives, then zeroes in on Freud's escape to London, where he published his last and most provocative book, Moses and Monotheism.
By taking a close look at Freud's last years-years that coincided with the onset of the Second World War-Edmundson probes Freud's prescient ideas about the human proclivity to embrace fascism in politics and fundamentalism in religion. At a time when these forces are once again shaping world events, The Death of Sigmund Freud suggests new and vital ways to view Freud's legacy.

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Mark Edmundson teaches at the University of Virginia, where he is University Professor. A prizewinning scholar, he has published a number of works of literary and cultural criticism, including Why Read?, Literature Against Philosophy, Plato to Derrida; and Teacher: The One Who Made the Difference. He has also written for such publications as the New Republic, the New York Times Magazine, the Nation, and Harper's, where he is a contributing editor.