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Country United States Pages 441 (1961 edition) Originally published 1959 Page count 441 (1961 edition) | 4.1/5 Goodreads Language English ISBN 978-0226716398 | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
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Freud: The Mind of the Moralist (1959; second edition 1961) is a book about Sigmund Freud by sociologist Philip Rieff. Susan Sontag, Rieff's wife, contributed to the book to such an extent that she has been considered an unofficial co-author.
Contents
Summary
Rieff interprets Freud as a conservative, a perspective which became predominant by the 1940s, when psychoanalysis had lost its initial shocking novelty. He portrays Freud as "heir to the tradition of Montaigne, Burton, Hobbes, and La Rouchefoucauld, a man deeply impressed by the limitations of the intellect and the obstinacy of the passions." Rieff saw Freud as an advocate of psychic compromise, who believed that people should make the best of an inevitably unhappy fate. Rieff admired Freud for what he saw as his sober realism.
Scholarly reception
Freud: The Mind of the Moralist established Rieff's reputation. Critic Frederick Crews called it the most helpful book about Freud for "placing psychoanalysis in the context of the intellectual and scientific history and the ethical assumptions from which it emerged." Paul Robinson called Rieff the most erudite and forceful of Freud's sympathetic interpreters on the right. Historian Peter Gay, writing in Freud: A Life for Our Time (1988), described Rieff's work as "an elegant extended essay eminently worth reading."
Philosopher Jeffrey Abramson compared Freud: The Mind of the Moralist to Herbert Marcuse's Eros and Civilization (1955), Norman O. Brown's Life Against Death (1959), Paul Ricœur's Freud and Philosophy (1965), and Jürgen Habermas's Knowledge and Human Interests (1968), arguing that they jointly placed Freud at the center of moral and philosophical inquiry.
Historian of science Roger Smith wrote that Freud: The Mind of the Moralist is a widely read study of Freud "in relation to changes in the wider culture".