ABSTRACT
Martin Wain’s Freud’s Answer: The Social Origins of Our Psychoanalytic Century 1 is an interesting book, which leaves a fine impression of the author’s mind, but it does get off to a slow start; and just because of the excellence of what it ultimately has to offer, readers ought to be warned not to be put off by the opening chapters. For it seems to me unfortunate that Martin Wain begins by hurriedly giving a potted-history of the Western nineteenth century, which seems largely to rely on good books by Peter Laslett and E. P. Thompson. I doubt that the genuine historical setting for the impact of Freud’s work can be enhanced by Wain relying on a few such famed secondary sources. Nor does Freud’s Answer offer original insights into the biographical specifics of Freud’s creation of psychoanalysis.
