Revolution in Mind: The Creation of Psychoanalysis - Hardcover

Makari, George

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 0715637592 ISBN 13: 9780715637593

Publisher: Gerald Duckworth & Co Ltd, 2008

Synopsis

Makari answers two fundamental questions: How did Freudian theory come together as a body of ideas, and how did these ideas attract followers who spread this model of the mind throughout the West? Makari contextualises Freud's early psychological work amid the great changes occurring in late-19th century European science, philosophy, and medicine, showing how Freud was a creative, inter-disciplinary synthesizer whose immersion in pre-existing domains of study led to the creation of Freudian Theory.He looks at how Freud's followers built a heterogeneous movement in the years leading to 1914, at the growth of the movement, and its subsequent collapse with the departures of Bleuler, Jung, and Adler. Finally, Makari examines the critical, but neglected, Weimar period, when there was an attempt to rebuild a more pluralistic psychoanalytic community, a reformation that resulted in psychoanalysis's broader theoretical reach and greater acceptance across the Western world outside Europe, where the rise of fascism led to the destruction of psychoanalysis and the culture that once sustained it." Revolution in Mind" stands alone as the first historical work to seriously study the central dilemmas that defined, organised, and disrupted this would-be science of the psyche during its formation.

About this title

Review:

'A magisterial study ... Makari's synthetic grasp is a great as the Freud he describes' -- The Financial Times

'At last: a history of psychoanalysis without partisanship or rancour ... An impressive achievement' -- Literary Review

'By far the best-informed history of psychoanalysis' -- Harold Bloom

'Makari has written nothing less than a history of the modern mind' -- Paul Auster

'Terrific ... Makari has taken the birth, maturity and embittered middle age of psychoanalysis and made it into a compelling, rich narrative'
-- New York Post

About the Author:

George Makari M.D. is Director of Cornell's Institute for the History of Psychiatry, Associate Professor of Psychiatry at Weill Medical College, and Visiting Associate Professor at Rockefeller University. He lives in Ithaca, in New York.

About this edition

• Publisher: Gerald Duckworth & Co Ltd
• Publication date: 2008
• ISBN 10: 0715637592
• ISBN 13: 9780715637593
• Binding: Hardcover
• Number of pages: 624