Freud and the History of Psychoanalysis: Beyond the Biographical Illusion
Language: English ・ By Invitation Only
Info
Join us and the USC Max Kade Institute in the living room of the Thomas Mann House for a lecture by historian of science Andreas Mayer, research professor at the French National Centre for Scientific Research and currently visiting professor at the University of Southern California.
Since the foundation of psychoanalysis, Sigmund Freud has been a figure of enduring fascination and irritation alike. A vast “Freud industry” of biographies, novels, films, and television series has continuously returned to Freud’s life, often seeking to extract broader lessons from the Viennese physician’s personality and private experiences. The result is a contradictory image: Freud is both admired and idealized, while at the same time his ideas are often challenged by scrutinizing his personal life. This long-standing focus on Freud the person has shaped how the history of psychoanalysis is told.
In this insightful lecture, Andreas Mayer examines the historical and epistemic reasons for this fixation and asks how the history of psychoanalysis might be written beyond what he terms the “biographical illusion.”
Participants
Andreas Mayer is a historian of science and research professor at the CNRS affiliated to the Ecole des Hautes Etudes en Sciences Sociales in Paris. In 2025-2026 he serves as the Dornsife/EHESS visiting professor at the University of Southern California. He has received many awards and fellowships (Wissenschaftskolleg zu Berlin, 2019-2020; Villa I Tatti, Florence, 2024-2025) and has published extensively on the history of the human sciences and of psychoanalysis, most notably, Dreaming by the Book: Freud’s The Interpretation of Dreams and the History of the Psychoanalytic Movement (with Lydia Marinelli, New York, 2003), Sites of the Unconscious: Hypnosis and the Emergence of the Psychoanalytic Setting (Chicago, 2013), and The Science of Walking. Investigations Into Locomotion in the Long Nineteenth Century (Chicago, 2020). His most recent book is entitled Freud gegen den Strich (Berlin, 2026). Photo: Andreas Mayer.