`A highly readable biography. . . wonderfully enjoyable. ' Independent on Sunday The story of Sigmund Freud was once the property of apologists, who were content to take his life and work at their face value. In recent years a new freud has emerged, no less significant but rather more fallible, as mysterious a creation as any of the subjects who crowded his case histories. This is the man Paul Ferris presents in this brilliant account of a long and desperate life. The man, his work and his world emerge in fine detail. Stoical, humorous devious, magnificently self-aware, he tried to explain us in terms of our memories and our past. But it is the wider attempt to grapple with the idiosyncrasis of human nature-his, and thus ours-that draws us into his web.