Introductory Lectures on Psychoanalysis (Penguin Freud Library) [Paperback]

Sigmund Freud (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: January 31, 1991 | Series: Penguin Freud Library

These lectures were delivered by Freud during World War I. Never before, in the course of 30 years of lecturing at the University of Vienna, had he deliberately set down, with a view to publication, the full range of his theories and observations. This series, therefore, represents a stock-taking of psychoanalysis as it stood after the secession of Adler and Jung.

Editorial Reviews

Language Notes

Text: English, German (translation) --This text refers to an alternate Paperback edition.

About the Author

Sigmund Freud (1856-1939) is one of the twentieth century's greatest minds and the founder of the psychoanalytic school of psychology. His many works include The Ego and the Id; An Outline of Psycho-Analysis; Inhibitions; Symptoms and Anxiety; New Introductory Lectures on Psycho-Analysis; Civilization and Its Discontent, and others.

Peter Gay is the author of more than twenty-five books, including the National Book Award winner The Enlightenment, the best-selling Weimar Culture, and the widely translated Freud: A Life for Our Time. He lives in New York City. --This text refers to an alternate Paperback edition.

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Product Details

• Paperback: 560 pages
• Publisher: Penguin Books (January 31, 1991)
• Language: German
• ISBN-10: 0140137912
• ISBN-13: 978-0140137910
• Product Dimensions: 7.6 x 5 x 0.9 inches
• Shipping Weight: 12 ounces
• Average Customer Review: 4.7 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (9 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #2,767,461 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

28 of 29 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars a titan of modern thought, March 2, 2005

By 

Phil Myers (Brooklyn) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Introductory Lectures on Psychoanalysis (Paperback)

This is the best introduction to Freud's ground-breaking psychological theories, now so much maligned and obscured by the apologists for the pharmaceutical stupefaction and mollification that now passes for psychiatry and keeps our bankrupt culture lurching forward.

It takes courage to read this book with an open mind, but if you do you can't but gain new insight into yourself and the people around you. The prose is delightful-- erudite, lucid, penetrating (ha!), and illustrated with beautifully observed examples from literature, history, and Freud's own life and practice.

5 of 5 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars STILL THE BEST INTRODUCTION TO FREUD'S THEORIES, August 12, 2010

By 

Steven H. Propp (Sacramento, CA USA) - See all my reviews
(TOP 500 REVIEWER)    (REAL NAME)   

This review is from: Introductory Lectures on Psychoanalysis (Paperback)

These lectures were given by Freud at the University of Vienna during the winter terms of 1915-1916 and 1916-1917. They were originally delivered extemporaneously, then written down by Freud immediately afterward. Though a modern reader is not likely blithely accept theories such as 'Penis Envy' and the 'Oedipus Complex,' these lectures remain an excellent introduction to Freud's thought, delivered by the man himself.

Here are some representative quotations from the book:

"(P)sycho-analysis is a procedure for the medical treatment of neurotic patients."
"(Psycho-analysis asserts) that instinctual impulses which can only be described as sexual ... play an extremely large and never hitherto appreciated part in the causation of nervous and mental diseases. It asserts further that these same sexual impulses also make contributions that must not be underestimated to the highest cultural, artistic and social creations of the human spirit."
"What instigates a dream is a wish, and the fulfillment of that wish is the content of the dream---this is one of the chief characteristics of dreams."
"The very great majority of symbols in dreams are sexual symbols."
"I refer you to ... C.G. Jung, at a time when he was merely a psycho-analyst and had not yet aspired to be a prophet..."
"(After Copernicus and Darwin) human megalomania will have suffered its third and most wounding blow from the psychological research which seeks to prove to the ego that it is not even master in its own house, but must content itself with scanty information of what is going on unconsciously in its mind."
"(Psycho-analysis) can be applied to the history of civilization, to the science of religion and to mythology, no less than to the theory of the neuroses, without doing violence to its essential nature. What is aims at and achieves is nothing other than the uncovering of what is unconscious in mental life."

16 of 21 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars best intro to the thought of a great humanist, May 23, 2001

By 

Robert J. Crawford (Balmette Talloires, France) - See all my reviews
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This review is from: Introductory Lectures on Psychoanalysis (Paperback)

Here you can witness Freud not as the straw man stereotype that so many despise but as a warm, humorous man with a great deal of vision. The man you encounter in this book is so different from what you would expect that I warmly recommend this to anyone with an inquiring mind.

He was a genius.