[The end of an illusion, Sigmund Freud and his 20th century].

At the end of the 20th century Eissler looks back to its beginnings and the outside figure of Sigmund Freud. What good have Freud's discoveries done? What progress have they promised and which of those promises have actually been redeemed? What kind of track record does psychoanalysis have to show for itself? The author undertakes a careful assessment of Freud's stature, his limitations and his scientific achievements, and comes to the skeptical conclusion that in the last resort it was in fact the founder of psychoanalysis who destroyed the illusion he himself had long subscribed to, i.e. that there is an indissoluble link between the increase of scientific knowledge and the salvation of homo sapiens. For Eissler's Freud the survival of humanity and the scientific civilization created by mankind are irreconcilable.