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New Introductory Lectures on Psycho-Analysis (The Standard Edition) (Complete Psychological Works of Sigmund Freud)

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In these seven lectures, written in 1932, Freud supplements the "Introductory Lectures on Psychoanalysis" (also called the General Introduction to Psychoanalysis) delivered in 1915-17, with additions and amendments to his theory developed through the 1920s.

The lectures contain a clear, concise presentation of some of Freud's later theory (the super-ego, eros/thanatos, trauma). They also contain some of his most dubious constructs (the castration complex, penis-envy), and a bizzare treatment of female sexuality and super-ego formation that will seem sexist to the modern reader, if not outright misogynist. Sadly, the most controversial of these concepts are not illustrated with the kinds of clinical examples that readers of Freud will have come to expect, relish, and rely on, and thus are very difficult to come to grips with.

The remainder of the work is a rather cursory attack on various disciples and rivals, and an attempt to place psychoanalytic theory within a scientific worldview in contraposition to religion and Marxism, as well as a suprisingly credulous treatment of the occult.

For the educated layperson seeking a general familiarity with Freud, I would recommend beginning with the Introductory Lectures, and then cherrypicking lectures 31 and 32 of this work for a synopsis of later developments in the theory.

Freud's original New Introductory Lectures on Psycho-Analysis (The Standard Edition)(Complete Psychological Works of Sigmund Freud) were given in Vienna between 1915-1917. These "new lectures" were written in 1932. Freud notes in the Preface, "These new lectures, unlike the former ones, have never been delivered. My age had in the meantime absolved me from the obligation of giving expression to my membership of the University ... by giving lectures... The new lectures are by no means intended to take the place of the earlier ones... they are continuations and supplements."

Here are some representative quotations from the book:

"(T)he super-ego takes the place of the parental agency and observes, directs and threatens the ego in exactly the same way as earlier the parents did with the child."
"(T)he ego is the sole seat of anxiety."
"And here I should like to add that I do not think our cures can compete with those of Lourdes. There are so many more people who believe in the miracles of the Blessed Virgin than in the existence of the unconscious."
"Religion is an attempt to master the sensory world in which we are situated by means of the wishful world which we have developed within us as a result of biological and psychological necessities. But religion cannot achieve this."