During the past 25 years, a momentous change has been overtaking the study of Sigmund Freud and his elaborate, engrossing, but ever more controversial creation, psychoanalysis Formerly, authors who deemed Freud worth discussing at book length tended to be either Freudian loyalists or partisans of some variant doctrine that shared at least a few of Freud's depth-psychological premises Their critiques were often selectively astute but rarely rigorous or thoroughgoing No doubt the same can still be said of most new books in the field, produced as they are by practicing analysts on the one hand and, on the other, by academic humanists who have raised their sights above narrowly βpositivisticβ (alias empirical) concerns Increasingly, however, Freud's oeuvre has been receiving sustained attention from scholars who hold no personal stake in the fortunes of psychoanalysis As recent works by Scharnberg (1993), Esterson (1993), Wilcocks (1994), Dawes (1994), Webster (1995), and Erwin (1996) attest, independent studies have begun to converge toward a verdict that was once considered a sign of extremism or even of neurosis that there is literally nothing to be said, scientifically or therapeutically, to the advantage of the entire Freudian system or any of its component dogmas