Author: Lucian Freud

1Dream Psychology

By Sigmund Freud

Not a few serious-minded students, [...], have been discouraged from attempting a study of Freud's dream psychology. The book in which he originally offered to the world his interpretation of dreams was as circumstantial as a legal record to be pondered over by scientists at their leisure, not to be assimilated in a few hours by the average alert reader. In those days, Freud could not leave out any detail likely to make his extremely novel thesis evidentially acceptable to those willing to sift data. - Freud himself, however, realized the magnitude of the task which the reading of his magnum opus imposed upon those who have not been prepared for it by long psychological and scientific training and he abstracted from that gigantic work the parts which constitute the essential of his discoveries.<br /><br />The publishers of the present book deserve credit for presenting to the reading public the gist of Freud's psychology in the master's own words, and in a form which shall neither discourage beginners, nor appear too elementary to those who are more advanced in psychoanalytic study. - Dream psychology is the key to Freud's works and to all modern psychology. With a simple, compact manual such as Dream Psychology there shall be no longer any excuse for ignorance of the most revolutionary psychological system of modern times. (From the book introduction, by Andre Tridon)

Anyone, as Freud tells us in <i>Reflections on War and Death</i>, forced to react against his own impulses may be described as a hypocrite, whether he is conscious of it or not. One might even venture to assert—it is still Freud's argument—that our contemporary civilisation favours this sort of hypocrisy and that there are more civilised hypocrites than truly cultured persons, and it is even a question whether a certain amount of hypocrisy is not indispensable to maintain civilisation. When this travesty of civilisation, this infallible state that has regimented and dragooned its citizens into obedience, goes to war, Freud is pained but not surprised that it makes free use of every injustice, of every act of violence that would dishonour the individual, that it employs not only permissible cunning but conscious lies and intentional deception against the enemy, that it absolves itself from guarantees and treaties by which it was bound to other states and makes unabashed confession of its greed and aspiration to power. For conscience, the idea of right and wrong, in the Freudian sense, is not the inexorable judge that teachers of ethics say it is: it has its origin in nothing but "social fear," and whereas in times of peace the state forbids the individual to do wrong, not because it wishes to do away with wrongdoing but because it wishes to monopolise it, like salt or tobacco, it suspends its reproach in times of war. The suppression of evil desires also ceases, and men, finding the moral ties loosened between large human units, commit acts of cruelty, treachery, deception and brutality the very possibility of which would have been considered incompatible with their degree of culture.<br /> (Summary by J.C. Grey, from <i>The Bookman: A Review of Books and Life</i>, v.47: Mar-Aug 1918. First sentence edited for clarity.)

Totem and Taboo: Resemblances Between the Mental Lives of Savages and Neurotics is a book by Sigmund Freud published in German in 1913 under the title Totem und Tabu: Einige Übereinstimmungen im Seelenleben der Wilden und der Neurotiker. It is a collection of four essays first published in the journal Imago (1912–13) employing the application of psychoanalysis to the fields of archaeology, anthropology, and the study of religion. The four essays are entitled: The Horror of Incest; Taboo and Emotional Ambivalence; Animism, Magic and the Omnipotence of Thoughts; and The Return of Totemism in Childhood. </p> (Introduction by Wikipedia)

4Über Psychoanalyse

By Sigmund Freud

Sigmund Freud war ein österreichischer Neurologe, der als der Begründer der Psychoanalyse gilt. "Über Psychoanalyse" ist eine Serie von fünf Vorlesungen die Freud zum 20jährigen Jubiläum der Clark University in Worchester, Massachussetts gehalten hat. In den Vorlesungen bespricht er Themen wie z. B. die Entstehung und das Ziel der Psychoanalyse; Traumdeutung und Hypnose; Verdrängung und Neurose sowie Sexualität. <br /><br /> Sigmund Freud was an Austrian Neurologist, who is revered as the father of Psychoanalysis. "Über Psychoanalyse" is a series of five lectures Freud gave at the occasion of the 20th anniversary of Clark University in Worchester, Mass. The lectures cover topics like the origin and the goal of psychoanalyis; interpretation of dreams and hypnosis; repression, neurosis as well as sexuality.

Professor Freud developed his system of psychoanalysis while studying the so-called borderline cases of mental diseases, such as hysteria and compulsion neurosis. By discarding the old methods of treatment and strictly applying himself to a study of the patient's life he discovered that the hitherto puzzling symptoms had a definite meaning, and that there was nothing arbitrary in any morbid manifestation. Psychoanalysis always showed that they referred to some definite problem or conflict of the person concerned. It was while tracing back the abnormal to the normal state that Professor Freud found how faint the line of demarcation was between the normal and neurotic person, and that the psychopathologic mechanisms so glaringly observed in the psychoneuroses and psychoses could usually be demonstrated in a lesser degree in normal persons. <br><br> This led to a study of the faulty actions of everyday life and later to the publication of the Psychopathology of Everyday Life, a book which passed through four editions in Germany and is considered the author's most popular work. With great ingenuity and penetration the author throws much light on the complex problems of human behavior, and clearly demonstrates that the hitherto considered impassable gap between normal and abnormal mental states is more apparent than real.<br><br> This translation is made of the fourth German edition, and while the original text was strictly followed, linguistic difficulties often made it necessary to modify or substitute some of the author's cases by examples comprehensible to the English-speaking reader. (Introduction to the translation by A. A. Brill)

A neat book on dream analysis by the founding father of psychoanalysis. This book is about the inner theater and the workings of the mind in the dreaming state. Covering lots of topics, the Austrian psychoanalyst's work on dreams is worth reading for anyone who would get up with a question mark face, trying to remember the dream they had just moments before and trying to understand what message their dream was conveying, if at all it was. (Summary by sidhu177)

7General Introduction to Psychoanalysis

By Sigmund Freud

These twenty-eight lectures to laymen are elementary and almost conversational. Freud sets forth with a frankness almost startling the difficulties and limitations of psychoanalysis, and also describes its main methods and results as only a master and originator of a new school of thought can do. A text like this is the most opportune and will naturally more or less supersede all other introductions to the general subject of psychoanalysis. It presents the author in a new light, as an effective and successful popularizer, and is certain to be welcomed not only by the large and growing number of students of psychoanalysis in this country but by the yet larger number of those who wish to begin its study here and elsewhere. (From the Preface)

8Three Contributions to the Theory of Sex

By Sigmund Freud

In this little book Freud discusses three areas of human sexuality: <br> 1. Sexual perversions or aberrations. In this essay, Freud concludes that "a disposition to perversions is an original and universal disposition of the human sexual instinct and that...this postulated constitution, containing the germs of all the perversions, will only be demonstrable in children“. <br> 2. His second essay on "The Infantile Sexuality", argues that children have sexual urges, from which adult sexuality only gradually emerges via psychosexual development. Looking at children, Freud identified many forms of infantile sexual emotions, including thumb sucking, autoeroticism, and sibling rivalry in childhood. <br> 3. In his third essay, "The Transformations of Puberty", Freud formalized the distinction between the 'fore-pleasures' of infantile sexuality and the 'end-pleasure' of sexual intercourse. He also demonstrated how the adolescent years consolidate sexual identity under the dominance of the genitals in puberty. <br><br> Originally published in 1905, Freud added significant insights over the next three editions to increase the length to about double its original size. This is the third and last edition, published in 1920. (Summary by Phil Chenevert and Wikipedia)

A series of lectures given in the USA by Freud in German, later translated into English - Summary by Peter Tucker