Here are the essential ideas of psychoanalytic theory, including Freud's explanations of such concepts as the Id, Ego and Super-Ego, the Death Instinct and Pleasure Principle, along with classic case studies like that of the Wolf Man. Adam Phillips's marvellous selection provides an ideal overview of Freud's thought in all its extraordinary ambition and variety. Psychoanalysis may be known as the 'talking cure', yet it is also and profoundly, a way of reading. Here we can see Freud's writings as readings and listenings, deciphering the secrets of the mind, finding words for desires that have never found expression. Much more than this, however, The Penguin Freud Reader presents a compelling reading of life as we experience it today, and a way in to the work of one of the most haunting writers of the modern age. Writings included: An Outline of Psychoanalysis The Splitting of the Ego in Defence Processes Letter to Romain Rolland (A Disturbance of Memory on the Acropolis) Constructions in Analysis Fetishism Negation Note on the 'Magic Notepad' Psychoanalysis' and 'Libido Theory Beyond the Pleasure Principle From the History of an Infantile Neurosis ('The Wolfman') Mourning and Melancholia Lapses Observations on Love in Transference On the Psychology of the Grammar-school Boy On the Introduction of Narcissism Remembering, Repeating, and Working Through from 'Contributions to the Psychology of Erotic Life' Formulations on the Two Principles of Psychic Functioning Family Romances Hysterical Phantasies and their Relation to Bisexuality Fragment of an Analysis of Hysteria ('Dora') Screen Memories Humour Format: Paperback
