Frederick Crews will present the main findings from his recent book, Freud: The Making of an Illusion. The over 700-page book is an intensive biographical study of Freud's life through the early years of psychoanalysis. It traces his several prior attempts to achieve fame, explains what he mistakenly learned from studying with the great Parisian neurologist Jean-Martin Charcot and follows his quite revealing adventures with cocaine. The book also reassesses Freud’s relations with his early mentor Josef Breuer and shows how his eventual theory was shaped in part by his attachment to his eccentric friend Wilhelm Fliess. Crews asserts psychoanalytic theory had no basis in either discoveries or cures. Instead, it can be understood as an outcome of Freud's ambitions, circumstances and limitations.