Customer Reviews

Introductory Lectures on Psychoanalysis

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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.

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."

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.

This is a great introduction to Freud's lectures and I'd recommend it to anyone interested in Freud's works and psycho-analysis. The book is very well translated and easy to read whether one has psych background or not.

Very well written and easy to read. Main concepts of psychoanalysis are introduced in the first three chapters on the example of the slips-of-the-tongue. The next several chapters deal with the dreams. The final part of the book is a theory of neurosis, which is difficult to read without having some special medical knowledge.

The explanations given are quite enough to try doing simple analysis on oneself. Freud is a superb writer and the translators did a good job as well.

I recommend this book to everyone who wants to learn about psychoanalysis. The only shortcoming is that the book reflects an outdated (100-years old) view on the subject, but I am unaware of anything more modern that would be equally interesting to read.

It is very heavy reading and you might want to have a deep intrest in the field of pschology. You will learn alot from this book, and it is a book that should be read and re-read a few years later. Great book for introduction to pschoanalysis and great price ;D

This collection is hit-or-miss. The parts that are truly insightful are utterly fascinating while the parts that miss the mark are extremely tedious (and boring). Nevertheless, it is important to understand one of the greatest thinkers in history and this work is a good place to start.

The copy arrived in perfect condition and on time. The work itself is pretty weird; Freud's dream interpretation theories provided my friends and I with great amusement. This might not be the best initial introduction to Freud, as parts of it assume that the reader has prior familiarity with his ideas. Overall, though, it's an important work with significant ramifications, and worth reading.

many things to think about, do not judge Freud and pull the log from your own eye and study until you do realize who the greatest teacher is, Freud is goodbut One is better.