Mental Healers: Mesmer, Eddy and Freud by Stefan Zweig (PDF)

Description

Franz Mesmer, Mary Baker Eddy and Sigmund Freud—three influential thinkers who travelled very different paths in their search for the crucial link between mind and body. Zweig’s brilliant study explores the lives and work of these important figures, raising provocative questions regarding the efficacy and even the morality of their methods. An insight into the minds of three key thinkers who shaped the philosophy of our age, Mental Healers is a wonderfully intriguing and thought-provoking biographical work from a renowned master of the genre.

User’s Reviews

Reviews from Amazon users which were colected at the time this book was published on the website:

⭐I found this book excellent in its first two sections, as it gives a very detailed account of the lives of both Mesmer and of Mary Baker Eddy, It is full of carefully researched descriptions of the lives of these two people and of the surrounding social milieu. However the section on Freud is closer to a summary of Zweig’s own interpretation of psychoanalysis than a biographical essay. Perhaps the fact that Zweig knew Freud personally and interacted with him deprived him of the necessary distance from his subject. Being so close in time and place and experience hindered him. In fact perhaps this was the reason he wrote a separate text on Freud (which I have not yet read). Therefore the missed fifth star on the rating. But altogether a thoroughly enjoyable instructive read.

⭐I was disappointed in this book. I felt he used magazine and newspaper articles that had been written about, in particular Mary Baker Eddy. From his writings I very much doubt if he read her seminal work Science and Health with Key to the Scriptures. I feel that he most likely would have gleaned a good deal of hope from it and may not have committed suicide. He certainly seems to have despaired for the world which is hardly surprising given what he had been through.

⭐Zweig was a world renowned author in his time, profiling the lives of great and very interesting and controversial people. This book, I believe, is one of his masterpieces. It is a wonderful addition to any healer’s library.

⭐Outstanding. Pure Zweig, as all his other biographies.

⭐Personal

⭐Stefan Zweig (1881-1942) fled Vienna in Hitler’s time and died by his own hand in Brazil. “Mental Healers” should be required reading for psychologists, physicians and all would-be healers. I first read this book at the beginning of psychiatric training about 1960, and find it relevant today, though, in regard to Freud, its praise is helpful in understanding why he was important rather than if he was right. Zweig gets good treatment–high praise- from Clive James in “Cultural Amnesia: Necessary Memories from History and the Arts.” (2007).

Keywords

Free Download Mental Healers: Mesmer, Eddy and Freud in PDF format
Mental Healers: Mesmer, Eddy and Freud PDF Free Download
Download Mental Healers: Mesmer, Eddy and Freud 2012 PDF Free
Mental Healers: Mesmer, Eddy and Freud 2012 PDF Free Download
Download Mental Healers: Mesmer, Eddy and Freud PDF
Free Download Ebook Mental Healers: Mesmer, Eddy and Freud