Freud

After decades of hagiographies and fiery sentences, it is very difficult to know today who Sigmund Freud was. However, after the publication of the last reference biographies, new archives have been opened to researchers and the main part of the correspondence is now accessible. Therefore, this is an excellent moment to return to a man and a work about which there was much to say. The founder of psychoanalysis was, to begin with, a Viennese of the Belle Epoque, a subject of the Austro-Hungarian Empire, heir to the German and Jewish Enlightenment. As for psychoanalysis itself, it is the result of a collective effort, of a cenacle in which Freud gave free rein to his fascination for the irrational and the occult sciences, sometimes turning his friends into enemies, acting as Faust but also as Mephistopheles. A modern thinker, but a conservative in politics, he never stopped acting in a contradictory way with his work, always in the name of Reason and Enlightenment. Here is Freud in his time, in his family, surrounded by his collections, with his wives, his children, his dogs; facing pessimism in the face of the rise of extremism, full of doubts when it comes to embarking on his London exile, where he will die. But we will also see him in ours, feeding our questions with his own doubts, his failures and his passions.