Dagmar Herzog uncovers the astonishing array of concepts of human selfhood which circulated across the globe in the aftermath of World War II. She reveals how competing theories of desire, anxiety, aggression, guilt, trauma and pleasure were mobilized in a fundamental rethinking of the very nature of the human psyche.

This book provides a panoramic history of psychoanalysis at its zenith, as human nature was rethought in the wake of war and the global transformations that followed.