The Cambridge companion to Freud

found out that, as a Jew, his aims were thwarted. Thus, he started working as a practical neurologist in Frankfurt and built up a private anatomical laboratory in order to continue his systematic and comparative studies of the brain. Only in 1914-four years before his death-was his Neurological Institute incorporated into the new University and Edinger made a professor. Dr. Emisch's book is divided into two parts. The first deals with the biography, the second with Edinger's scientific contributions, in particular with his attempt to establish a psychology on anatomical grounds. The author is in the good position of being able to base her story on an unpublished autobiography of Edinger. Unfortunately, however, she restricts her historio-graphical viewpoint to Edinger's narrative. Consequently, the reader gets the impression that the historian does not know much more than her subject. She "believes" Edinger's remarks on the medical faculties of Heidelberg and Strasbourg, or on the status of neuroanatomy in 1880, instead of comparing them with other sources or with secondary literature. It is also regrettable that Dr Emisch did not compare Edinger's biography with those of other Jewish intellectuals. In the second part the author plausibly argues that Edinger regarded his anatomical research as a service for psychology. The most important result of the book is that Edinger's combination of comparative anatomy and of studies in animal behaviour made him one of the early contributors to animal psychology. These passages are highly informative, but again one would have wished she had compared Edinger's approach with similar works by Theodor Meynert, Bernhard von Gudden, or Paul Flechsig. Despite these shortcomings the author has directed our attention to a very important figure in late-nineteenth-century brain research. Freud as a philosopher! Perhaps the old man would have been pleased. When he was a student he admired Franz Brentano and understood the philosophical debates of his time as well as any physician. has put together this, the most recent volume in the "Cambridge companion to major philosophers", series running from Aquinas to Spinoza (but including Marx and Foucault). Neu, who has psychoanalytic training, has compiled a volume which truly serves as a "companion" to Freud. Not exactly a source book, not exactly a historical introduction, it provides in-depth essays on a series of topics which frame Freud's work. But he is not considered as a philosopher in the narrow sense of that word, for to do …