SAVING FREUD The Rescuers Who Brought Him to Freedom

Gifted with a dramatic voice and, equally important, dramatic instinct, Michael David Axtell demonstrates his ability to sustain, balance, and shape a narrative that has a wide reach and many branches. Freud, paradoxically, recognized that savagery is wedded to mankind's nature but discounted the danger he himself was in as the Nazis took over Vienna. His actual rescue proves relatively uneventful and occupies a small part of this narrative. The rest is a history of psychotherapy and biographies of the many people who contributed to saving Freud, all of interest, all pertinent. Axtell's steady tone bridges the narrative's leaps in time and focus while centering on the stately, dying Freud--whose mystique is still powerful today. D.A.W. © AudioFile 2022, Portland, Maine [Published: JULY 2022]