Mousetraps and the moon

Intended as a follow-up to the author's earlier work, Maelzel's Chess Player: Sigmund Freud and the Rhetoric of Deceit (1994), this text looks at how Freud carried out his research and medical duties in the early years. Wilcocks (modern French literature, U. of Alberta, Edmonton) finds the picture to be less than flattering. His contention is that Freud's great influence may be attributed to his mastery of language, rather than his insight into human beings, and that he was "frequently dishonest and mostly incompetent" (from the introduction). Annotation copyrighted by Book News, Inc., Portland, OR