The Freud Files: An Inquiry into the History of Psychoanalysis

"...the book collects together all the main claims that have been leveled over the years against psychoanalysis and, more particularly, its founder..."
--John Gray, Literary Review


"...This book will be of interest to anyone concerned with debunking myths.... General readers may learn from this book as well as advanced scholars.... This book is fascinating and convincing and I took a lot of pleasure reading it..."
--Christophe Al-Saleh, University of Amiens, France, Metapsychology Online Review


"offers a fascinating look at deliberate construction of one of contemporary culture's most enduring lenses on the human condition, challenging its most fundamental assumptions and frameworks..."
--Maria Popova, Brainpickings


"...To reconstruct pyschoanalysis's arduous rise, Mikkel Borch-Jacobsen and Sonu Shamdasani in The Freud Files draw on the major revisionist works of the Freud wars by Henri Ellenberger and Frank Sulloway as well as letters made available in recent years, among them Freud's correspondence with Abraham and Sándor Ferenczi...."
--Elias Altman, Nature

How did psychoanalysis attain its prominent cultural position? This book reconstructs the early controversies surrounding psychoanalysis and shows that rather than demonstrating its superiority, the Freudians rescripted history. This was not incidental, but formed the core of psychoanalytic theory. The Freud Files reveals how psychoanalysis is vulnerable to its past.

Professor Sonu Shamdasani is a historian of psychology and psychiatry and is widely regarded as the leading Jung historian at work today. His numerous publications have been translated into many languages and his last edited book, Jung's Red Book (2009) was on The New York Times bestseller list and a documentary is currently being prepared on the subject.

Mikkel Borch-Jacobsen is Professor of French and Comparative Literature at the University of Washington. He is the author of highly influential books on the theory and history of psychoanalysis and co-author of the bestselling Le livre noir de la psychanalyse (The Black Book of Psychoanalysis).