Brown, Norman Oliver
Brown, Norman Oliver,
1913–2002, American scholar, philosopher, and social critic, b. El Oro, Mexico; grad. Oxford (1936), Univ. of Wisconsin (Ph.D.). A classicist much influenced by FreudFreud, Sigmund, 1856–1939, Austrian psychiatrist, founder of psychoanalysis. Born in Moravia, he lived most of his life in Vienna, receiving his medical degree from the Univ. of Vienna in 1881.
His medical career began with an apprenticeship (1885–86) under J.
..... Click the link for more information. , Brown thought that the degree to which sexuality was repressed in America led not only to the stifling of instincts but also to a perversion of human drives from life and art to money and death. In his writings he mingled such elements as Freudian psychology and Marxism, religious documents and literary works in order to arrive at new insights. His works include Life against Death: The Psychoanalytical Meaning of History (1959), Love's Body (1966), Hermes the Thief (1969), Closing Time (1973), and Apocalypse and/or Metamorphosis (1991).