Secrets of the soul

About this book

"Eli Zaretsky shows how Freud's teachings set the stage for the modernism of the 1920s and the sexual revolution of the 1960s. He takes psychoanalysis back to its roots and describes its close ties to the second industrial revolution, when Freud replaced the Enlightenments' idea of rational man with the concept of the unconscious - a switch that, with the advent of the Great War and the theory of anxiety, offered compelling explanations for the horrors of modern warfare." "Zaretsky shows how psychoanalysis encouraged the idea of an individual life distinct from the family, persuading people to look inward rather than follow a path ordained by custom or birth (Henry Ford inadvertently supported Freud - he encouraged workers to locate their identities not in the family, or in the workplace, but in consumerism)... how psychoanalysis both hindered and emancipated women, homosexuals, and African Americans... how Freud's theories were welcomed in the United States because they fit with the American emphasis on the individual... how psychoanalysis led to the birth of other therapies and movements that, in many cases, replaced it."--BOOK JACKET.