Volume 50, Number 20 · December 18, 2003
Darwin and His Doppelgänger
By Frank J. Sulloway
Charles Darwin: The Power of Place
by Janet Browne
Knopf, 591 pp., $37.50
In Darwin's Shadow: The Life and Science of Alfred Russel Wallace
by Michael Shermer
Oxford University Press, 422 pp., $35.00
In 1922 Sigmund Freud wrote to Arthur Schnitzler, the Austrian playwright known for his penetrating psychological dramas, to congratulate him on reaching his sixtieth birthday. In this letter Freud asked himself why, for so many years, he had avoided meeting a fellow Viennese intellectual whose ideas he so esteemed for their similarity to his own. In answering this question, Freud offered 'a confession' to Schnitzler—one that he requested the playwright to keep to himself. 'I think I have avoided you from a kind of reluctance to meet my double [Doppelgängerscheu].... Whenever I get deeply interested in your beautiful creations I always seem to find behind their poetic sheen the same presuppositions, interests and conclusions as those familiar to me as my own.'[1]
Review, 4965 words
To read the full text of this piece, please choose one of the following options:
|
If you are already a subscriber to the Review's electronic edition, please sign in: |
To subscribe to the electronic edition, please press the button below. |
To purchase access to this article for $3, please press the button below. |