Taking the reader on a journey through the 20th century, this book traces the work and influence of one of its greatest icons, Sigmund Freud. The critique ranges across the strange case of Anna O, the hysteria of Josef Breuer, the love of dogs, the Freud industry, the role of gossip and fiction, bad manners, pop psychology and French philosophy, figure skating on thin ice, and contemporary therapy culture. A map to the Freudian minefield and a masterful negotiation of high theory and low culture, "Killing Freud" is a revaluation of psychoanalysis and its real place in 20th-century history. It should appeal to anyone curious about the life of the mind after the death of Freud.

Table of Contents

Part 1 Suggestion & fraud in the age of critical Freud Studies: the strange case of "Anna O." - an overview of the 'revisionist' assessment; rhetoric, representation, and the hysterical Josef Breuer; critical readers of Freud unite - a new era for Freud studies. Part 2 Selected memories of psychoanalysis - history, theory, politics freud and his followers, or how psychoanalysis brings out the worst in everyone; gossip, fiction, and the history of the history of psychoanalysis - an open letter; Jacques what's-his-name - death, memory, and archival sickness; the politics of representing Freud - a short account of a media war; this time with feeling; funny business - the cartoon seminar of Jacques Lacan; going to the dogs, or my life as a psychoanalyst, by David Beddow. Part 3 Analysts at play, working: psychoanalysis on thin ice - Jones and figure skating; psychoanalysis, doggie style. Part 4 Last Words: psychoanalysis, parasites, and the "culture of banality"; the futures of psychoanalysis.

Author Biography

Todd Dufresne is Chair of the Department of Philosophy at Lakehead University and is editor of Returns of the French Freud and Freud Under Analysis, and author of Tales From the Freudian Crypt. He is currently working on the origin of the psycho-neuroses and on the sensational 1923 Chicago trial of Leopold and Loeb, at which Freudian ideas first began to influence criminology.