Blazing a trail unprecedented in Freud research, Ilse Grubrich-Simitis turns to Freud's original manuscripts to provide a fresh and authentic view of his methods of working, his psychological states, the events of his life, and the development of his thinking. This book is at once a study of Freud's creativity, an authoritative commentary on previously unexplored aspects of his life and work, and an important reference on his own texts.

In this text, the author examines Freud's earliest psychoanalytic book, Studies on Hysteria, which he wrote together with Breuer, and Moses and Monotheism, his last book. The essay on Studies on Hysteria reveals to the reader why that book is considered the primal book of psychoanalysis. If offers an account of the birth of the psychoanalytic method and introduces the key concept of trauma - establishing a foundation on which much of modern psychoanalysis has been built. Freud was to return to his original theory of trauma in his last book, Moses and Monotheism, where he developed it further...