- Paperback: 560 pages
- Publisher: Penguin Books Ltd; New edition edition (31 Jan 1991)
- Language English
- ISBN-10: 0140137912
- ISBN-13: 978-0140137910
- Product Dimensions: 19.4 x 12.8 x 2.4 cm
- Average Customer Review: 3.0 out of 5 stars See all reviews (1 customer review)
- Amazon Bestsellers Rank: 115,007 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)
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Product Description
Product Description
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.
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Customer Reviews
Most Helpful Customer Reviews
1 of 2 people found the following review helpful
Format:Paperback|Amazon Verified Purchase
This book is a series of transcripts of lectures given by Freud during the first World War and summarises his research, experience and beliefs up to that point in his career.
I found the book hard going. Part of the problem no doubt is that language has developed since that time and so some of the wording and phrasing is unfamiliar. Part of the problem is also that Freud never seems to use one word when a hundred will do. Sometimes I read a paragraph and felt that it could have been summed up in a sentence. The fact that it has been translated from German does not help - especially in the sections dealing with 'slips of the tongue' where the translation makes it difficult to see how two words could have been mixed up.
Although this is a small paperback, the print is small so there is great deal of information to get through.
For people interested in Freud or psychotherapy it might be worth the effort to plough throught it although I would have thought time would be better spent reading an updated summary of Freud's thoughts and theories.
Although the field of psychology owes much to Freud, the reader should bear in mind that many of his ideas and theories have been challenged by later research and so care should be taken to not regard this work as any sort of gospel about psychology.
I found the book hard going. Part of the problem no doubt is that language has developed since that time and so some of the wording and phrasing is unfamiliar. Part of the problem is also that Freud never seems to use one word when a hundred will do. Sometimes I read a paragraph and felt that it could have been summed up in a sentence. The fact that it has been translated from German does not help - especially in the sections dealing with 'slips of the tongue' where the translation makes it difficult to see how two words could have been mixed up.
Although this is a small paperback, the print is small so there is great deal of information to get through.
For people interested in Freud or psychotherapy it might be worth the effort to plough throught it although I would have thought time would be better spent reading an updated summary of Freud's thoughts and theories.
Although the field of psychology owes much to Freud, the reader should bear in mind that many of his ideas and theories have been challenged by later research and so care should be taken to not regard this work as any sort of gospel about psychology.
Most Helpful Customer Reviews on Amazon.com (beta)
Amazon.com:
9 reviews
29 of 30 people found the following review helpful
a titan of modern thought
3 Mar 2005
Format: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.
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
STILL THE BEST INTRODUCTION TO FREUD'S THEORIES
12 Aug 2010
Format: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."
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
best intro to the thought of a great humanist
23 May 2001
Format: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.
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