Biography / Memoir / Psychiatry / European Studies / Judaica

 

Recollecting Freud
Isidor Sadger
Edited and introduced by Alan Dundes
Translated by Johanna Micaela Jacobsen and Alan Dundes


The first English translation of a "lost memoir" by Freud's disciple

Available here for the first time in English, this eyewitness account by one of Freud's earliest students has been rediscovered for twenty-first-century readers. Isidor Sadger's recollections provide a unique window into the early days of the psychoanalytic movement—the internecine and ideological conflicts of Freud's disciples. They also illuminate Freud's own struggles: his delight in wit, his attitudes toward Judaism, and his strong opinions concerning lay, nonmedical analysts.

As a student, Sadger attended Freud's lectures from 1895 through 1904. Two years later Freud nominated Sadger to his Wednesday Psychological Society (later called the Viennese Psychoanalytic Society). Sadger, however, was not part of Freud's inner circle, but more a participant observer of the early years of the psychoanalytic movement and of Freud as teacher, therapist, and clinician.

Sadger was considered one of the most devoted followers of Freud and hoped to become one of Freud's "favorite sons." At the First Psychoanalytic Congress held in Salzburg in 1908, Sadger was chosen to be one of the principal speakers along with Freud, Jones, Alder, Jung, Prince, Rifkin, Abraham, and Stekel, an honor that bespeaks Sadger's early importance in the movement. But Freud and many of his disciples were also openly critical of Sadger's work, calling it at various times overly simplistic, unimaginative, reductionist, orthodox, and rigid.

In 1930 Sadger published his memoir, Sigmund Freud: Persönliche Erinnerungen. With the rise of Nazism and World War II, the book became lost to the world of psychoanalytic history. Recently, Alan Dundes learned of its existence and mounted a search that led him around the world to one of the few extant copies—in a research library in Japan. The result of his fascinating quest is Recollecting Freud, a long-lost personal account that provides invaluable insights into Freud and his social, cultural, and intellectual context.

Isidor Isaak Sadger (1867­1942), a Viennese neurologist, was one of Freud's earliest and most devoted students. Alan Dundes (1934–2005), was professor of anthropology and folklore at the University of California, Berkeley, and published ten books with the University of Wisconsin Press, including Parsing Through Customs: Essays by a Freudian Folklorist; The Vampire: A Casebook; The Blood Libel Legend; and Cinderella: A Casebook. Johanna Micaela Jacobsen is completing her Ph.D. in Folklore and Folklife at the University of Pennsylvania and pursuing her research interests in the history of folkloristics in Germany.

For more information contact our publicity manager, phone: (608) 263-0734, email: publicity@uwpress.wisc.edu

cover of Sadger has an old photo of Freud

June 2005  LC: 2004025672 BF
144 pp. 6 x 9 1 b/w photo
ISBN 0-299-21100-2 Cloth $26.95 t


To order, you can accumulate titles in the Shopping Cart by clicking on the bulleted lines below. You can submit your order electronically, paying for it with MasterCard or Visa.
Click here for further explanation of shopping cart feature.




Never ordered from us before?
Read this first.

Home | Books | Journals | Events | Textbooks | Authors | Related | Search | Order | Contact

If you have trouble accessing any page in this web site, contact Kirt Murray, Web manager. E-mail: kdmurray@wisc.edu or by phone at 608-263-0733.

© 2005, The Board of Regents of the University of Wisconsin System