ABSTRACT
It may be no exaggeration to claim that psychoanalysis "has detonated throughout the intellectual, social, artistic and ordinary life of our century as no cultural force . . . since Christianity" (Malcolm, 1981, p. 22) —a comparison Freud might well have found apt. If, indeed, psychoanalysis has had such an impact, it must have been seeded in rich soil, whose varied nutriments were remarkably energizing. This was the case. Although psychoanalysis was shaped primarily by one man and is even today best understood through his writings, Freud drew on a cultural background of great breadth and complexity. He managed to integrate a diversity of intellectual influences, and his work bears witness to his antecedents.
