Few have changed an entire era through their thinking as profoundly as Sigmund Freud. After Freud, we dream and love, think and fantasize differently. This grand biography depicts Freud's life and the development of psychoanalysis as a great novel of the mind. Vienna in the declining 19th century: It is hard to imagine a better backdrop for the soul's suffering of modern man, for his existential lies and crumbling self-images, than the splendidly morbid capital of the Austro-Hungarian Empire. Here, the neurologist Sigmund Freud works on his groundbreaking theories of sexuality and neurosis, dreams and the unconscious, family and society, fairy tales and myth. Peter-André Alt, drawing on unpublished material, tells the story of the psychoanalytic movement, its triumphs and defeats, and portrays Freud as a self-critical dogmatist and knowledgeable figure.