The world knows Freud as a thinker-one of the founding giants of modern culture. Now Lydia Flem paints a unique and unforgettable portrait of Frued the man- a father, husband, and friend, a secular Jew with passion for classical antiquity and European culture, torn between his need to be fully accepted in an anitsemitic society while remaining fatihful to his orgins
This taboo-breaking book deepens the understanding of the death of one's parents through the experiences of the author, a daughter of Holocaust survivors. Her parents never communicated their imprisonment experiences, causing Lydia Flem to grow up in a stifling silence that was finally broken upon their deaths as she emptied the old house. She discovers that the lonely process of bereavement is not only one of grieving, but a chaotic jumble of emotions that range from anger and oppressive, infinite pain to revulsion, remorse, and a strange sense of freedom.
Offers an unconventional view of Casanova as a benevolent lover of women, an ardent believer in the Enlightment, who grew from a sickly Venetian infant, abandoned by his actress mother, to become a spirited voluptuary