Sunday, June 5, 2011

The Question of God: C.S. Lewis and Sigmund Freud Debate God, Love, Sex, and the Meaning of Life

The Question of God: C.S. Lewis and Sigmund Freud Debate God, Love, Sex, and the Meaning of Life Review



The Question of God: C.S. Lewis and Sigmund Freud Debate God, Love, Sex, and the Meaning of Life Feature

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Of course we can never really answer the question of whether God exists. And of course it would have been highly unlikely for Sigmund Freud and C.S. Lewis to discuss this question in person, considering that they were born in different countries and a generation apart. Nonetheless, The Question of God allows readers to listen in on one of the most articulate debates possible by creating a virtual meeting of Freud and Lewis. For the past 25 years, Armand M. Nicholi has taught a similar course at Harvard, where he compares Freud’s atheist-based reasoning against the atheist-turned-believer C.S. Lewis. Both men were considered brilliant, highly educated thinkers who profoundly influenced 20th-century thought. And both men presented compelling arguments for and against the existence of God.

At the core is Freud’s assertion that God is a figment of the imagination (more accurately, God is an outcome of our deep-seated need for protection, stemming from the helplessness of early childhood). Lewis, on the other hand, did not see the belief in a higher power as a childish need for comfort. In fact, he wrote, "rendering back one's will which we have so long claimed for our own, is, in itself, extremely painful. To surrender a self-will inflamed and swollen with years of usurpation is a kind of death." Nicholi never take sides. Instead he gives both men a chance to eloquently answer the big questions of humanity: why is there suffering? What should be our guiding belief? How do we form a moral compass? Surprisingly, this debate turns out to be a fascinating page-turner, with most of the credit going to Nicholi. Because he understands these men's arguments so well and respects their beliefs so thoroughly, believers could begin to have doubts and atheists could start to wonder. Regardless of where you ultimately land on the question of God, this stellar book will deeply enrich your understanding of humanity. --Gail Hudson Throughout the ages, many of the world's greatest thinkers have wrestled with the concept of -- and belief in -- God. It may seem unlikely that any new arguments or insights could be raised, but the twentieth century managed to produce two brilliant men with two diametrically opposed views about the question of God: Sigmund Freud and C. S. Lewis. They never had an actual meeting, but in The Question of God, their arguments are placed side by side for the very first time.

For more than twenty-five years, Armand Nicholi has taught a course at Harvard that compares the philosophical arguments of both men. In The Question of God, Dr. Nicholi presents the writings and letters of Lewis and Freud, allowing them to "speak" for themselves on the subject of belief and disbelief. Both men considered the problem of pain and suffering, the nature of love and sex, and the ultimate meaning of life and death -- and each of them thought carefully about the alternatives to their positions.

The inspiration for the PBS series of the same name, The Question of God does not presuppose which man -- Freud the devout atheist or Lewis the atheist-turned-believer -- is correct in his views. Rather, readers are urged to join Nicholi and his students and decide for themselves which path to follow.


Saturday, June 4, 2011

Letters of Sigmund Freud

Letters of Sigmund Freud Review



First extensive selection of Freud’s correspondence contains 315 letters written from 1873 to 1939. Addressed to Einstein, Thomas Mann, Havelock Ellis, H. G. Wells, Maria Montessori, Carl Jung, Romain Rolland, many others. Over one third are love letters to Martha Bernays. Highly readable, nontechnical. Bibliography. Footnotes. Translated by Tania and James Stern. 15 halftones.


Thursday, June 2, 2011

Any Survivors?: A Lost Novel of World War II

Any Survivors?: A Lost Novel of World War II Review



A recently rediscovered satirical novel about WWII by the eldest son of Sigmund Freud
 
In 2008 a faded typescript was discovered in a suitcase in the attic of the Freud Museum in London. It was a satirical novel written by Sigmund Freud's son Martin, but never published and apparently forgotten about. Now translated into English and published for the first time, thisis not only a satirical and dramatic novel about a Jewish refugee who returns to Hitler’s Germany as a rather inept spy, but also the testament of a man who lived through the most dramatic moments of this period as part of a famous and fascinating family. Freud and his family had escaped from Nazi-occupied Vienna in 1938, narrowly avoiding losing everything, including their lives. Arriving in England, Martin, formerly an eminent lawyer in Vienna, was interned as an "enemy alien," and later ran a shop near the British Museum (his son, Walter, fought for the British in the SOE during the war). It is known that Martin wrote numerous poems and pieces of fiction, but the only books he ever published were a fictionalized account of his experiences during World War I, Parole d’Honneur, in 1939 and a biography of his father, Glory Reflected: Sigmund Freud—Man and Father, in 1957.


Wednesday, June 1, 2011

Freud and False Memory Syndrome (Postmodern Encounters)

Freud and False Memory Syndrome (Postmodern Encounters) Review



Since about 1992, an astonishingly fierce scientific professional and legal controversy has arisen around the allegation that psychotherapists may sometimes have fostered false memories of childhood sexual abuse. Some have blamed Freud for this, arguing that he sowed the seeds of "false memory syndrome" 100 years ago. He has been accused by some critics of abandoning, out of professional cowardice, his original recongition of the prevalence of sexual abuse amongst his patients, substituting his theory of childhood sexuality and the Oedipus complex, and by others of fabricating and implanting false memories of abuse in his patientes' minds. Was Freud the bad father, impregnating society with misldeading ideas that a century later have given birth to a monster - or was he an astonishing genius, whose sophisticated understanding of memory was far ahead of his time? Much bashed, but rarely read, Freud continues to be urgently relevant to issues that preoccupy psychology and society today.


Tuesday, May 31, 2011

Freud's Case Studies: Self-Psychological Perspectives

Freud's Case Studies: Self-Psychological Perspectives Review



These thoughtful self-psychological reexaminations of Freud's case studies clarify Freud's criteria for including and excluding data, underscore the theoretical and political imperatives that shaped his narrative accounts, and provide new insight into the transference-countertransference constellations that emerged during treatment. Clinically, these reappraisals take us beyond Freud's preoccupation with his patients' oedipal narratives to a self-psychological exploration of these same patients' intersubjective experiences.


Monday, May 30, 2011

Freud, Leonardo da Vinci, and the Vulture's Tail: A Refreshing Look at Leonardo's Sexuality

Freud, Leonardo da Vinci, and the Vulture's Tail: A Refreshing Look at Leonardo's Sexuality Review



Freud initiated psychobiography with his 1910 Leonardo da Vinci, A Memory of His Childhood, but was mislead by translators of Leonardo's recollection. Leonardo recalled having been visited by a hawk while still in his cradle. Freud was led to identify it as a vulture. Because the vulture was believed to be always female and self-impregnating, the vulture was the perfect mother symbol.

The fact that in Leonardo's dream the bird had inserted its tail into the infant's mouth, Freud interpreted as an insertion of the mother's nipple that would fuse later in Leonardo's mind with the insertion of a male member, thus forming the basis of Leonardo's homosexuality. The mistaken identity of the bird aroused severe criticism that effectively damned Freud's book.

Andersen proves that the mistake was not Freud's. After bringing to light information that Freud could not have known about Leonardo's illegitimate birth and the circumstances of his infancy and youth in Florence, Andersen provides a new reading, seamlessly fusing psychoanalysis with fifteenth-century Florentine art history.


Sunday, May 29, 2011

An Anatomy of Addiction: Sigmund Freud, William Halsted, and the Miracle Drug Cocaine

An Anatomy of Addiction: Sigmund Freud, William Halsted, and the Miracle Drug Cocaine Review



From acclaimed medical historian Howard Markel, author of When Germs Travel, the astonishing account of the years-long cocaine use of Sigmund Freud, young, ambitious neurologist, and William Halsted, the equally young, pathfinding surgeon. Markel writes of the physical and emotional damage caused by the then-heralded wonder drug, and how each man ultimately changed the world in spite of it—or because of it. One became the father of psychoanalysis; the other, of modern surgery.
 
Both men were practicing medicine at the same time in the 1880s: Freud at the Vienna General Hospital, Halsted at New York’s Bellevue Hospital. Markel writes that Freud began to experiment with cocaine as a way of studying its therapeutic uses—as an antidote for the overprescribed morphine, which had made addicts of so many, and as a treatment for depression.
 
Halsted, an acclaimed surgeon even then, was curious about cocaine’s effectiveness as an anesthetic and injected the drug into his arm to prove his theory. Neither Freud nor Halsted, nor their colleagues, had any idea of the drug’s potential to dominate and endanger their lives. Addiction as a bona fide medical diagnosis didn’t even exist in the elite medical circles they inhabited.
 
In An Anatomy of Addiction, Markel writes about the life and work of each man, showing how each came to know about cocaine; how Freud found that the drug cured his indigestion, dulled his aches, and relieved his depression. The author writes that Freud, after a few months of taking the magical drug, published a treatise on it, Über Coca, in which he described his “most gorgeous excitement.” The paper marked a major shift in Freud’s work: he turned from studying the anatomy of the brain to exploring the human psyche.
 
Halsted, one of the most revered of American surgeons, became the head of surgery at the newly built Johns Hopkins Hospital and then professor of surgery, the hospital’s most exalted position, committing himself repeatedly to Butler Hospital, an insane asylum, to withdraw from his out-of control cocaine use.
 
Halsted invented modern surgery as we know it today: devising new ways to safely invade the body in search of cures and pioneering modern surgical techniques that controlled bleeding and promoted healing. He insisted on thorough hand washing, on scrub-downs and whites for doctors and nurses, on sterility in the operating room—even inventing the surgical glove, which he designed and had the Goodyear Rubber Company make for him—accomplishing all of this as he struggled to conquer his unyielding desire for cocaine.
 
An Anatomy of Addiction tells the tragic and heroic story of each man, accidentally struck down in his prime by an insidious malady: tragic because of the time, relationships, and health cocaine forced each to squander; heroic in the intense battle each man waged to overcome his affliction as he conquered his own world with his visionary healing gifts. Here is the full story, long overlooked, told in its rich historical context.