The Erotic

Salome's unique contribution to the erotic was that she argued sexual difference ran deeper than economics and equality―the politics of Marx and the ideals of the French Revolution. For Salome, to think about women and their erotic nature, you must start with their biological and psychological difference, not their economic situation.

Salome was an outstanding theorist. Her books on Nietzsche and on Rilke are major studies. The field of psychoanalysis would not have developed in the way it did without Lou Andreas-Salome. We cannot understand Freud's "rationalism" or his anti-religious sensibility without Salome's writings. This new English translation is an essential text of psychoanalysis, one that shaped the very conception of the field.