Psychoanalyst and author Lou Andreas-Salome may seem to be a figure remote from us, one belonging to a pre-1914 Europe, but in many ways, she is our contemporary. She travelled in a highly romantic world as socialite, sociologist, and author. She was part of Georg Simmel's salon, the most exclusive in Berlin, frequented by elusive poet Stefan Georg, dramatist Paul Ernst, social theorist and polymath Max Weber, and Georg Lukacs, among others.

Salome's unique contribution to the erotic was that she argued sexual difference ran deeper than economics and equality--the politics of Marx...