A Brief Apocalyptic History of Psychoanalysis: Erasing Trauma

This book goes back to the birth of psychoanalysis and to what the author calls its umbilicus, a trauma of castration. Carlo Bonomi's story centres on the genital mutilation suffered in childhood by Emma Eckstein, one of Freud's most important patients, and on how Freud came to set aside the seduction theory.

Bonomi argues that Freud could not recognise the traumatic nature of that childhood operation, which stirred deep anguish in him and mixed together his own circumcision, a hostile anti-Semitic climate and a strained relationship with his father. He suggests that this unacknowledged trauma shaped Freud's system of thought as an amputated legacy. Sandor Ferenczi, the pupil and confidant who followed, is presented as someone who helped restore that wounded body and lay new foundations for psychoanalytic theory and practice.

The book is aimed at readers across psychoanalysis, its history, and gender and Jewish studies.ISBN-13 9781032404349.