Freudians and Schadenfreudians: Loving and Hating Psychoanalysis

Sigmund Freud can be a polarizing figure, beloved by many and despised by some. Focusing on ten key writers and scholars who either passionately loved or gleefully loathed Freud, this book represents Freud's wide legacy, the reach of his ideas, their controversies, and their ability still to provoke, inspire, confound, outrage, and compel.

The book begins by focusing on five highly prolific authors whose admiration for Freud is boundless: Lionel Trilling, Harold Bloom, Kurt R. Eissler, Peter Gay, and Deborah P. Britzman. Berman then explores five more writers whose aim was not simply to debunk Freud and destroy his monstrous creation but to cast both into hell: D.H. Lawrence, Vladimir Nabokov, Thomas Szasz, Peter J. Swales, and Frederick Crews. Each chapter discusses the author's involvement with Freud, showing the continuities and discontinuities of his or her writings, as well as offering snapshots of the writers, suggesting how their personal and professional lives were inextricably related.

In conclusion, the book draws out some suprising commonalities between the Freudolaters and Schadenfreudians, going on to discuss the current state of psychoanalysis, the "psychoanalytic credos" by which contemporary analysts live.