Vienna Triangle Book

Brenda Webster's critically acclaimed memoir, The Last Good Freudian (2000), gave us "a powerful critique of orthodox psychoanalysis without engaging in Freud bashing" (San Francisco Chronicle) and a "fascinating glimpse into the heyday of American psychotherapy" (Booklist). Webster's Vienna Triangle delves -- as only a novel can -- even deeper into the interlaced roots of psychoanalysis. Webster explores the loves and rivalries in Freud's inner circle that led to the tragic and unexplained death of Viktor Tausk, Freud's "most brilliant disciple," in 1918. Forty years later, Kate, a young scholar, stumbles upon this mystery as she interviews Helene Deutsch, "Freud's darling" and one of the few surviving members of his inner circle. Kate's research becomes urgently personal as she probes the tangled affairs of the legendary analysts: Freud, Deutsch, Tausk, and Lou Andreas-Salomé, "serial muse" to Nietzsche, Rilke and Freud. Were the fears and jealousy of the "father of psychoanalysis" justified? Who was stealing ideas from whom? Was psychoanalysis used as an Oedipal weapon? The truth may be both lethal and life-affirming.Read More