At last: a history of psychoanalysis without partisanship or rancour. This neutral and thorough account of one of the most controversial intellectual movements to sweep Europe and the world between 1870 and 1945 is greatly needed today. George Makari’s history of the origins, spread and elaboration of Freudian theory is an impressive achievement.

For Makari, a New York academic and psychiatrist, by the last third of the nineteenth century society was ready for rethinking. Karl Marx had awakened the belief that science could reform political and social behaviour and organisation. From 1859 Charles Darwin's Origin of Species awakened scientific interest in sexuality; mating