MixedThe New RepublicHere’s the problem: Brownstein wants to make Freud the (very) bad guy of a story that had little to do with him, even if he had a great deal to do with the case becoming a story ... Brownstein thus rewrites up the notorious case, with his chatty, negative asides and interpretations taking center stage ... As author and son, Brownstein is overwhelmed by the research subject he must now try to understand.
Alexander Stille
MixedBookforumMany reporters claim to surface an under-told story, but Stille truly delivers ... Stille offers an exuberant and often moving journalistic account of how this project turned cultic, but he never quite seems to care that the cult started as a utopian Marxist-Freudian project —save that it adds to the wacko factor. Stille’s sometimes pat understandings of Freud and psychoanalysis leave a hole at the center of the story. This is not to say that Stille should have been a better historian, but without taking the particularities of Freud and psychotherapy seriously, the Sullivanians could be seen as a run-of-the-mill cult.
