Always a touchy question, there were probably never two more notably opinionated scholars to debate it. Overall, the author uses his research into their letters, lives and published writings to try to formulate a debate on the main topics of love, sex, death, pain and how to live life from a materialist vs. spiritual worldview.

Saving the author’s notably biased conclusions for your own perusal, I found the work enlightening not only on topics of spirituality and psychoanalysis, but as a biography of the two men themselves.

The most personal epiphany that I had while reading the book was early on when reading Lewis’ comments about love and its pusuit as a purely selfless act as the means to happiness. While I found this helpful and a lovely idea, I was still painfully aware of certain facts and criticisms of biblical history that either he or Nicholi omit. Lewis seems to find most of the proof for his spiritual worldview in literary criticism of the Bible, but addresses the books as eye-witness accounts of Jesus that are in perfect agreement, instead of addressing the fact that their authorship varies by up to centuries and deeply reflects different early branches and sects of Christianity’s political biases. I found this failure to address a rather large materialist criticism dissapointing, but recognize that the error could in fact be Nicholi’s.

As far as Freud goes, I found myself not hating him quite as much as the sexist egotist archetype that he represents in my mind and finding some pity and recognition for his contribution to society and his personal grievances. However, perhaps it is mainly his male dominated world view that often made me wonder what a woman’s perspective in this dialogue could show, particularly a spiritual (but not Judeo-Christian) woman.