Publisher Description
The controversial father of psychiatry and psychoanalysis, Sigmund Freud charted the human unconscious, brought us the talking cure, and wrote books that now rank among the classics of world literature. In On the Couch, the great analyst is analyzed by some of today's great writers and thinkers, who help us understand the man who has helped us understand ourselves as much, if not more, than anyone else, ever. The result is a fresh, multifaceted reassessment of Freud's continuing relevance and influence on ideas, literature, culture, science, and more.
Colm Tóibín writes about Freud, World War I, Henry James, and Thomas Mann; Adam Gopnik explores Freud's Civilization and Its Discontents; Susie Orbach considers Freud's "ordinary unhappiness" and D. W. Winnicott's "good enough"; Jennifer Finney Boylan reflects on penis envy and gender identity; Peter Kramer describes how new science and drugs have revolutionized psychology since Freud; Susie Boyt, one of Freud's great-granddaughters, spends the night at the Freud Museum in London; Siri Hustvedt examines Freud's divided reception today; and there's much more.
Filled with insights, provocation, and humor, On the Couch offers an original and nuanced portrait of Freud as a complex figure who, for all his flaws, forever changed how we see ourselves and the world.
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About the Authors
Jennifer Finney Boylan is a professor of English at Colby College and the author of the bestseller She’s Not There, as well as several other acclaimed novels, including The Planets and Getting In. She has appeared on The Oprah Winfrey Show, Larry King Live, Today, and 48 Hours, and she has played herself on ABC’s All My Children.
Colm Tóibín is an Irish novelist, short story writer, essayist, playwright, journalist, critic, and poet. His novel The Master won the International IMPAC Dublin Literary Award, the Prix du Meilleur Livre Étranger, the Los Angeles Times Book Prize for Fiction, and was short-listed for the Man Booker Prize. His other books of fiction have earned similar awards and have been translated into numerous languages. He lives in Dublin, Ireland.
Siri Hustvedt is an award-winning novelist and author of a book of poetry, seven novels, four collections of essays, and a work of nonfiction. Her many awards include the International Gabarron Prize for Thought and Humanities and the Los Angeles Book Prize for Fiction for The Blazing World, which was also longlisted for the Man Booker Prize. In 2019, she won an award for literature from the American Academy of Arts and Letters, the European Essay Prize (Charles Veillon) for The Delusions of Certainty, a book-length essay on the mind-body problem, and the prestigious Princess of Asturias Award for Literature in Spain. She has a PhD in English literature from Columbia University and is a lecturer in psychiatry at Weill Cornell Medical College. Her scholarly work is interdisciplinary, and she has published papers in various academic and scientific journals.
Andrew Blauner is the founder of Blauner Books
Literary Agency. He is the editor of Coach: 25 Writers Reflect on People Who
Made a Difference; Brothers: 26 Stories of Love and Rivalry; and Central
Park: An Anthology. He is also coeditor of Anatomy of Baseball. A graduate of Brown University and
Columbia Business School, he is a member of PEN and the National Book Critic
Circle.
André Aciman is the author of the novels Call Me by Your Name and Eight White Nights, the memoir Out of Egypt, and two books of essays. He is also the editor of The Proust Project. He teaches comparative literature at the Graduate Center of the City University of New York, where he directs the Writers’ Institute.