Love and hate in the nursery and beyond

In this provocative application of Freudian psychoanalytic theory, Jule Eisenbud probes issues around the Oedipal complex—expressions of infantile desire for the breast, ambivalence towards the mother from dependence on her, and the terrors of abandonment in infancy and childhood. Describing how these fixations and projections are developed and transformed in the unconscious throughout life, Eisenbud shows how they may have influenced the life and creative careers of such major figures as René Descartes, George Bernard Shaw, William Hogarth, Giorgio de Chirico, Utrillo, naturalist John James Audubon, and especially Alfred Hitchcock, whose films Esienbud psychoanalyzes. Humorous, thoughtful, and provocative, Eisenbud’s blend of prehistory, history of science, art criticism, popular culture and psychoanalysis demonstrates the universality and timelessness of unconscious themes.