For a hundred years the decoding of Freud and psychoanalysis has been a preoccupation in the West. If it was not, as presented, a science and therapy for the treatment of individuals suffering from mental illness, what was it? Critics have labeled it a failed experiment or a hoax, suggesting that Freud was deluded, or anti-Victorian, or an aspiring prophet. Disciples have seen it as a means to a private identity, or a coherent belief system after the fall of religion, or an essential tool of a humane and democratic society. But none of a welter of explanations has accounted for the Freudians...