Introductory Lectures on Psycho-Analysis Paperback – 17 September 1989

I am reading through vol 15 of collected works I am nearing its end! This volume was written in the midst of war and like most people involved in the barrage of war, senseless death and destruction changed everyone's view of the war! It not only changed their ideas regarding war, but also how this destructiveness felt itself in sibling rivalries, separations and sabotage, not only in war, but it gave them a new perceptive on things. This writer is not unique in this, he just thought what most other intellectuals and philosophers were thinking aloud during the war, and the situation today is even worse. On p 237 he talks of his views psychoanalytic as compared to anagogic..which are the higher instincts of the mind? The higher functions of the mind were probably the largest growths of the brain after primitive times, the contemplative, philosophical religious...which rather than relying on impulses thought of humans as capable of being driven by more comntemplative criteria..if a person has food, sex, he is driven to more and more until everyone realizes his aims to conquer..and their is a reaction? That's Freud's view of most people..however there are those who ae not so oriented in this aggrandizing fashion..are interested in contemplative, religious, transpersonal, community oriented criteria as being part of a community a larger structure and contributing to a whole..this is more like Adler and Jung... occupy a place somewhere in between. He mentions it at books end..given the war it may not have seemed like a bad idea, and he will increasingly write on society, groups, religion after the war, the religious writings are not his best work, and its where his colleagues part company with him on being insistent on these views.This book recapitulates much of his previous work, and is almost a summary and seems passe? On p 17 he notes on how the cinema the mass media phenomenon is taking over as forming people's minds, and this was in its infancy. On p 20 given the changes in psychology/psychiatry he wonders should it be a science? A question many people as today and he refers to it as "the study of the contents of consciousness"(p 21). We live in worlds constantly "created anew"(p 23)..this means with changed values of the people who are creating it, and how will this effect us? Later "loneliness and darkness have just robbed me of my valuables"(p 45)..is this not something material, but some lost intimacy in this changed world. Later "unjustifiably adopting an extreme mechanistic view"(p 46). Our science is mechanistic, deterministic, it relies on the ability to make laws given that the natural world follows fixed laws like newton's..but unfortunately it doesnt always..things can be indeterminate..is the world mechanistic..this will effect whether psychology/psychiatry can be scientific, or to what extent? On p 84/85 he pokes some fun at psychiatry and he is a psychiatrist..but has gone into independent study..so you should not expect his views as being subsumed under the label psychiatry..and he often talks on how he differs..and youll find practitioners draw some of these same inferences today? On p 92/93 as elsewhere he talks of a typical church sunday morning, the mystical frame of mind, contemplative, "devotions"..peoplebeing devoted to a higher cause..this is non scientific..does that make it bad or good as morals are non scientific..science and the ability to reason scientifically is not related to morals..which are a non scientific form of thinking. Remember he is a determinist who does not believe in free will but writes"is only exhibiting my trust in providence..deeply rooted faith in undetermined psychical events ..quite unscientific..determinism whoose rule extends over mental life"(p 106). On p 155 he sees no difference in the sexuality of men and women seen in dreams as "flying"(p 155).He develops later his view on children. Before Freud children were thought to be innocent and friendly and in nature kind and decent, playful it was only later they became differentiated in some way. Here he writes of them as being "polymorphously perverse"(p 209)..largely lackin gin morals which later they may develop. Children left to themselves and near seduction, develop"perverse sexual activity"(p 209). This is important in the study of narcissism and the regression to more infantile states of narcissism, sexual development, fixations, lack of maturity and lack of..infantile states, including violence and even troubles with certain sectors of the adult world,are considered infantile states..and this is thinking he largely developed. So that is vol 15 the important aspects are science and the field of psychology/psychiatry and he is a good writer at times since even though he is a determinist who believes in fixed laws..he tells you in glowing terms the positive views of others, the genuinely religios (genuine is important)..mysticism..the forming of values and morals and their non relation to intellect and scientific intellectual thinking..this disturbs him but its none the less true?

Really good book, very interesting and thought provoking.

Horrific seller. Book is an absolute mess, turned the cover to have it fall off. It is ripped in numerous places, just not acceptable

I loved this book. Freud goes from dreams to parapraxes to symptoms to transference and analysis. Freud speaks very sensibly and compassionately. It is an easy read but really serves as a great introduction to psychoanalysis. I personally have been studying Lacan for the past 2.5 years and I have only read secondary works on Freud up to this point. This was my first book by Freud that I have read and I loved it. I have already bought "Beyond the Pleasure Principle" and "Civilization and its Discontents" and I look forward to reading them.So many people think they know Freud, yet they have never read anything by him. Freud speaks very reasonably. There were some pieces of material that were very dubious indeed, but the majority of Freud's teachings in this book were very sensible (i.e. the logic behind dreams, parapraxes and symptoms, the repetition of behavior formed at a young age).I highly recommend this book.

I once read an abbreviated version of this book at a music professor's house while my girlfriend was rehearsing in the other room, and it immediately forced me to appreciate the phenomenon of the "Freudian slip of the tongue." After a few weeks, I wanted to finish the book, but I couldn't remember the name. I got on my beloved Amazon.com and looked around, eventually finding this much larger version of the same lecture series. It's fascinating, it truly is, but having read an introduction to Jung alongside it (which told me of Freud's intellectual rigidity), I started reading Freud with an equally closed mind to his own, meaning I read his lectures far more critically than I might otherwise have done with a "nicer" chap's work. Still, his theories are sound (for their time) and the readability is what you might find in a history book written about the same time period (i.e. it's not overly scientific, but the translations from German are garbled sometimes).