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A Forgotten Freudian: The Passion of Karl Stern

Author(s) : Daniel Burston

Reviews and Endorsements

‘Karl Stern (1906-1975) was a complicated and fascinating figure, resurrected here from near invisibility by Daniel Burston’s meticulous biography. Stern, a "Hebrew Catholic" born and educated in Germany, came to practice psychiatry in Canada in 1939, where he also displayed his talents as a best-selling non-fiction author, novelist, and skilled musician. Stern, like his cohort of Jewish converts, offers scholars of religion and the social sciences a study of hybrid identity, parental conflict, friendship, loss, religious conversion, and psychoanalytic debates, set against the backdrop of the signal movements and events of the twentieth century. Stern’s friendships and correspondence with prominent Catholics of the era, including Dorothy Day, Graham Greene, Gabriel Marcel, and Jacques Maritain are well-served in Burston’s perceptive treatment.’
- Paula Kane, Professor of Religious Studies and Marous Chair of Contemporary Catholic Studies, University of Pittsburgh

‘With his characteristic eloquence and subtlety of analysis, Daniel Burston describes the rise, struggles, and remarkable accomplishments of Karl Stern, a key figure of mid-twentieth-century psychoanalysis who deserves to be remembered for his central contributions to the understanding of culture and the psyche. Burston’s gripping account sheds welcome new light on the history of both psychiatry and psychoanalysis. A fine, heartfelt, moving work of intellectual biography and cultural history.’
- Louis Sass, author of Madness and Modernism and The Paradoxes of Delusion

‘Drawing on Duquesne University’s rich archive of published and unpublished fictional and epistolary material, Daniel Burston has written a compelling account of Karl Stern’s personal and professional life. This biography traces his journey from Germany to Canada, from neurology to psychoanalysis, from troubled Judaism to committed Catholicism. Stern’s spiritual experience is given particular attention and contextualized geographically, historically, and philosophically as he struggled to resolve the tensions between science and religion, between his European Jewish roots and his particular understanding of Catholicism in the post-World War II world. Burston pays a worthy tribute to this forgotten Freudian.’
- Dr Caroline Zilboorg, Life Member, Clare Hall, University of Cambridge

Read a review of this title in 'Catholic World Report'