Deconstructing Freud
by John F. Baker -- Publishers Weekly, 5/28/2001
A young Freudian analyst, Matthew von Unwerth, has put the Viennese master on the couch in a literary deconstruction called Freud's Requiem, which Riverhead's Cindy Spiegel has just preempted for six figures for world rights. The deal was made by Marly Rusoff, a former senior publicity executive and associate publisher at Doubleday, who is now agenting as an affiliate of the Carlisle & Company agency. It is a first book for von Unwerth, who directs the Brill Library, a center of research in psychoanalysis in Manhattan. Rusoff explains that the author examines in detail an essay by Freud called "On Transience," in which he describes a walk with an unidentified poet who was in fact Rilke, and notes how Freud reinterpreted everything that was said and done that day; as a result, von Unwerth has come to see psychoanalysis as "a science of mourning," in which there are still redemptive possibilities.
