SOURCE: Toews, John E. “Historicizing Psychoanalysis: Freud in His Time and for Our Time.” Journal of Modern History 63, no. 3 (September 1991): 504–45.

In the following essay, Toews discusses the development of psychoanalytic theory in its historical and cultural context, and addresses the strengths and weaknesses of Gay's Freud: A Life for Our Time in conveying this context.

[Freud: A Life for Our Time,] Peter Gay's massive new biography of Freud is subtitled: “A Life for Our Time.” Although Gay does not discuss the intended meaning of the subtitle, even a casual reader of his text will soon become aware of at least two ways in which Freud's life is to be perceived as a life for “our time.” First, Gay presents Freud's life as an exemplary ideal, as the historical embodiment of intellectual and moral virtues relevant to an “our time” defined broadly enough to encompass Freud's own time and...