In this monumental intellectual biography, Frank Sulloway demonstrates that Freud always remained, despite his denials, a biologist of the mind; and, indeed, that his most creative inspirations derived significantly from biology. Sulloway analyzes the political aspects of the complex myth of Freud as psychoanalytic hero as it served to consolidate the analytic movement. This is a revolutionary reassessment of Freud and psychoanalysis.

"Fascinating… A thought-provoking tour through this extraordinary chapter in the history of ideas." - Newsweek

"A work of prodigious scholarship in its own right. It establishes a new level of empirical precision and critical skill in the analysis of Freud’s life." - New York Times Book Review

"Extraordinarily exciting and enlightening… A truly comprehensive intellectual biography of Freud and the analytic movement, which embodies the scholarship so sorely lacking in previous endeavors… The result here is an informative, authoritative, and comprehensive work, brimming with all sorts of revelations and new versions of old tales about Freud’s…predecessors and contemporaries. One’s view of Freud and the origins of psychoanalysis will never be quite the same after reading this book." - Modern Psychoanalysis