themadmaiden's review
4.0
Just when you think Freud couldn't get worse, you find out actually it's so much worse. A really interesting, and frankly disturbing at times, book.
sophronisba's review
3.0
Some biographies read like they were written by the subject's defense attorney; this one reads like a brief by a prosecutor. I began to feel a bit sorry for Freud before I was halfway through. Crews may be right, or mostly right, but the length and the lack of any balance made this a tough read for me.
stephang18's review
4.0
This is NOT a biography of Freud. It really covers his intellectual development for the first half of his life. The portrayal, which I suspect is accurate, is unrelentingly negative and shows Freud to have been pretty much a terrible person. He was a plagiarist, egomaniac, greedy, petty, adulterous man who created a false science. The prose is excellent; nothing fancy but clear throughout.
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