W. H. Auden described Sig­mund Freud (1856 – 1939) as ​“a whole cli­mate of opin­ion / Under whom we con­duct our dif­fer­ing lives.” The con­tro­ver­sial father of psy­chi­a­try and psy­cho­analy­sis, Freud chart­ed the human uncon­scious, brought us the talk­ing cure, and wrote books that now rank among the clas­sics of world lit­er­a­ture. In On the Couch, the great ana­lyst is ana­lyzed by some of today’s great writ­ers and thinkers, who help us under­stand the man who has helped us under­stand our­selves as much, if not more, than any­one else, ever. The result is a fresh, mul­ti­fac­eted reassess­ment of Freud’s con­tin­u­ing rel­e­vance and influ­ence on ideas, lit­er­a­ture, cul­ture, sci­ence, and more.

Here, Colm Tóibín writes about Freud, World War I, Hen­ry James, and Thomas Mann; Adam Gop­nik explores Freud’s Civ­i­liza­tion and Its Dis­con­tents; Susie Orbach con­sid­ers Freud’s ​“ordi­nary unhap­pi­ness” and D. W. Winnicott’s ​“good enough”; Jen­nifer Finney Boy­lan reflects on penis envy and gen­der iden­ti­ty; Peter Kramer describes how new sci­ence and drugs have rev­o­lu­tion­ized psy­chol­o­gy since Freud; Susie Boyt, one of Freud’s great-grand­daugh­ters, spends the night at the Freud Muse­um in Lon­don; Siri Hustvedt exam­ines Freud’s divid­ed recep­tion today; and there’s much more.

Filled with insights, provo­ca­tion, and humor, On the Couch offers an orig­i­nal and nuanced por­trait of Freud as a com­plex fig­ure who, for all his flaws, for­ev­er changed how we see our­selves and the world.