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Gay's doorstopper is an unexpectedly accessible account of Freud's life and works, in which narrative progression is deftly blended with thematic discussions of Freud's ideas and publications as well as broader political and cultural contexts.

By page 150 � less than a quarter of the way into the main text � Freud is already in his mid-forties, but there's only so much that can be fitted into a one-volume work and Gay's extensive treatment of the second half of his subject's life reflects the increasingly broad nature of Freud's output and activities once he had established himself, as well as his significance as a public figure and even celebrity. However, Gay's account of Freud's early years is engaging and informative: so many threads and connections in twentieth-century culture have some personal, familial or intellectual link back to the apartment at Berggasse 19, but it is important not to overlook the nineteenth-century milieu from which Freud in turn emerged. In particular, Gay notes the mentoring of "the great German physiologist" Ernst Wilhelm von Brücke, and Freud's early work translating Hippolyte Bernheim. This first part also deals with the breaks from Breuer and Fliess, Freud's rejection of the "seduction theory" (the unhappy legacy of which lives on in "recovered memory" therapy), and his regrettable early enthusiasm for cocaine (disastrous for his friend Fleischl-Marxow, that is).

Gay also provides portraits of Freud's circle, at some points tending towards digression � particularly as regards the rather needy figure of Sándor Ferenczi. Three female associates stand out: Lou Andreas-Salomé, who in turn had known Nietzsche ("was very fond of her", Freud wrote after her death, "strange to say without a trace of sexual attraction"); Marie Boneparte (the "energy devil", who, with help from Ernest Jones [biography reviewed here], facilitated Freud's escape from the Nazis to London), and of course his youngest daughter Anna. In a section called "The Dark Continent" Gay provides a roll-call of female friends � his one-time patient Hilda Doolittle, as well as Helene Deutsch, Joan Riviere, Jeanne Lampl-de Groot and Ruth Mack Brunswick � in mitigation of criticisms that Freud's analytic notions about women were overdetermined and deficient. Gay also tries to give Martha Freud her due, although Mrs Freud remains somewhat in the background after their courtship and wedding; they were happy, but she wasn't "a companion for her husband in his long and lonely progress towards psychoanalysis", and Freud, as a "principled atheist", quashed her wish to maintain some domestic religious expression.

Gay's American perspective comes through in certain passages: the author delights in recording the fulminations of various US pastors and moralists against Freud's work, and I was gratified that I anticipated during the discussion of Moses and Monotheism that Gay would include a comparative reference to Porgy and Bess. Gay psychoanalyses Freud's anti-Americanism, and one of the book's highlights is an account of Freud's ill-considered association with William Bullitt, which resulted in a polemical study of Woodrow Wilson that remained unpublished until 1967 (Gay suggests that Freud did it in part because he thought the project might bring in some money). In contrast, though, Freud's US-based nephew Edward Bernays gets only a passing reference, and there is no mention of his unwelcome suggestion that Freud might like to write a column for Cosmopolitan.

The book challenged some of what I thought I knew about Freud � while formal and non-demonstrative, he seems to have been a tender father; and his interest in telepathy gives the lie to the idea that he was an arch-reductionist (an impression I got from Jung's famous story � not mentioned by Gay � that Freud supposedly appeared disturbed and bewildered by a paranormal phenomenon). Freud was also indifferent about the end of the Austro-Hungarian Empire, thus undercutting the proposition that anger over this was his motive for the Wilson book. One interesting detail about Freud in translation is that the famous terms "Id", "Ego" and "Superego" are "Latinate inventions of the Standard Edition", and that Freud used normal German to refer to "the It", "the I" and "the Over-I".

In some places, I would have preferred a more detailed narrative � how exactly Freud came to become friends with Stefan Zweig, for example, is not clearly explained. At other times, though, the work is a page-turner. Perhaps the most dramatic moment is Anna Freud's interview with the Gestapo, for which Freud's physician Max Schur provided her with a suicide capsule in case things went badly. Kept waiting outside the office, Anna insisted on being seen, and in Gay's opinion this probably saved her life as it meant the interview was processed there and then and she was free to go.

One criticism that is often made of Gay's book is that it is uncritical, and that the author inevitably takes Freud's side in his feuds and broken friendships. This is indeed the case, notwithstanding Gay's acknowledgment of some of Freud's flaws and foibles. Gay notes the irregular nature of Freud's analysis with Anna, but there is no critical discussion of the reasonable suspicion her adult "sublimation" of sexual feeling may be evidence of damage. Further, while Fleiss's quackery is discussed in detail, Gay glosses odd ideas such as Freud's suggestion to Ernst Simmel that the institutionalized Princess Alice of Greece (Prince Philip's mother [biography reviewed here]) should be treated for mental delusions with "an exposure of the gonads to X-rays, in order to accelerate the menopause". Gay attempts to explain why Freud's idea that dreams are always wish-fulfilments is not non-falsifiable (nightmares being inverted wish-fulfilments), but I wasn't convinced.

More could perhaps also have been said about Freud's own neuroses � we see Freud the stoic facing cancer (caused by smoking) and finally opting for euthanasia, but the there isn't much sign of his famous "death anxiety". We are told, though, that Freud's telephone number, 14362, prompted a neurotic superstition: "He had published The Interpretation of Dreams at forty-three, and the last two digits, he was convinced, were an ominous monition that sixty-two was indeed to be his life's span." He was out by more than twenty years.