In Western culture, the psychoanalysis that has guided popular psychology for almost a century is now on the retreat. Better equipped with proven results, cognitive and evolutionary psychology has driven psychoanalysis out of the spotlight. In cultural and film studies, however, the debate between cognitive sciences and psychoanalysis remains contentious. This volume explores this state of things by examining criticism of 18 films, juxtaposing them with cognitive-based films to reveal the flaws in the psychoanalytical concepts. It pays particular attention to simulation theory, the concept that narratives "learned" from films could work in human minds as simulations for solutions to particular problems. By introducing the idea of narrative stimulation to film studies, this work argues for a different method of film critique, encouraging further research into this nascent field.

Freud's 17-year-old case study "Dora" is well known in the literature of psychoanalysis. Yet few know the full story--told here for the first time--of this notable woman, who walked out on Freud after three months and, in a sense, cured herself. Born into an important Jewish-Austrian family, Ida Bauer Adler suffered from "petite hysteria"--loss of voice, difficulty breathing, migraines, fainting spells--brought on by the overt sexuality of her relatives. Growing up in a home beset with syphilis and tuberculosis, she overcame her father's marital infidelity, her mother's so-called housewife psychosis and her own seduction by the husband of her father's mistress. She married, raised a son, started a small business, stayed close with her brother, Otto, leader of the Austrian Socialist party, and survived Hitler's invasion of Vienna. Eventually, she made her way to the U.S. to rejoin her famous son, maestro of the San Francisco Opera House.

This is not intended to be a popular biography of Freud: several have been written already, containing serious distortions and untruths. Its aims are simply to record the main facts of Freud's life while they are still accessible, and--a more ambitious one--to try to relate his personality and the experiences of his life to the development of his ideas --Preface.

An analytical biography of the precursor of psychoanalysis and famous neurologist, which reveals his childhood, courtship and marriage, career, ill health and death from cancer. Bibliogs.