Charles Darwin made history a scientific method; Sigmund Freud applied the scientific method to psychology, with equally starting results. In the first book to reveal the seminal role that Darwin?s method and ideas played in Freud?s basic thinking, Lucille B. Ritvo shows how Freud could have been influenced by Darwin's ideas and how the biologically rooted discipline of psychoanalysis reflects this relationship.
"A well-written, extensive, and careful examination of the impact of Darwin's evolutionary biology on Freud's psychoanalytic theory-building [...] Ritvo provides new evidence that identifies the zoological training of Carl Claus as more important in this regard than the more touted physiological influence of Ernst Brucke."
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