A good premise, but a flawed execution. Worth reading if you have an interest in one of the men, but I wouldn't hold this up as a prime example of scholarship...

Nicholi never quite gets into his groove when he discusses these two men. Sometimes he switches back and forth between them with each paragraph, and sometimes he devotes whole long sections to one man, before ending it and moving on to another long section for the next. He constantly throws in quotes, but never really addresses, evaluates, or analyzes them enough for the reader -- he should be using quotes to get a sense for who the man is, pointing out unique characteristics, distinctions in personality, inconsistencies in worldview... but so often he leaves the quote hanging there and moves on to another idea.

There were also key points in Lewis's life that he got wrong or ignored. Nicholi refers to The Screwtape Letters as "an address at a dinner for young devils in training" -- but this is not the format for The Screwtape Letters. The Screwtape Letters are letters from one demon to another over a long period of time. It's Screwtape Proposes a Toast that is formatted as an address at a dinner, which is section of prose Lewis added as an addendum to the book publication 15 years later. Nicholi also never addresses Lewis's relationship with Mrs. Moore at all, which is often claimed to have been romantic, in his section on sex and love.

And for being a debate, this discussion seems a little off-kilter. On the one hand you have a late 19th century scientist writing in the medical field, and on the other hand an early 20th century classicist/apologist, writing about literature and philosophy. It's clear who Nicholi favors in this comparison, and if I were an atheist I think I would be very annoyed by how shallow he takes some of Freud's points. There's a reason these two men never met or talked, and often this debate felt contrived, forced, and uneven.

Often Nicholi lapses into purely biographical information for these authors in his "debate" -- something necessary only to a certain degree in a comparative book like this. Throwing out facts and quotes from a person's life doesn't make for a good "debate" unless you are actually going to contrast and juxtapose the two points of view. So often he throws out useless questions, but this is not a classroom where students need to think about these issues to study for a test -- this is a scholarly, researched, analytical book that should be doing the thinking for the reader! So often I winced at formulaic questions like "So what was Freud's views on topic A?" or "Can the answer to Freud's views on this be seen in his life and writings?" or "So is love really only about sex?" (the last one is actually on page 162).

Sometimes he even throws in his own perspective with a few "I did this..." statements, and two sentences later he's quoting Freud saying "I think this..." with barely any transition. It's disorienting for the reader to be tossed around so much. Nicholi even is so self-inflated as to put in a "I have often wondered why," about the fact that Anna Freud never married. Why don't you actually analyze why you think she never married, instead of commenting that you're curious!? Nicholi needed an editor to chop stuff out and heavily rearrange his ideas. And make him write more.

Good topics about good authors, but this guy's definitely no Alister E. McGrath.