It's here! Browse the 2024 Penguin Christmas gift guide
The Essentials of Psycho-Analysis

The Essentials of Psycho-Analysis

Summary

The Essentials of Psycho-analysis is the definitive collection of Sigmund Freud's writing. It covers the themes that Freud explored in his work from the meaning of dreams and the concept of the unconscious, instinctual and sexual life to the structure of the personality. Beautifully written and endlessly fascinating, the pieces collected here are the perfect guide to the principle concepts of psycho-analysis.

Reviews

  • He was possessed of exceptional literary gifts. There can be no question that he was a great writer: to read him is to be beguiled by him... his influence on all of us was enormous, and it would be as impossible to return to a pre-Freudian way of thinking as to return to a pre-heliocentric theory of the solar system
    The Times

About the author

Sigmund Freud

Sigmund Freud (1856-1939) was born in Moravia; between the ages of four and eighty-two his home was in Vienna: in 1938 Hitler's invasion of Austria forced him to seek asylum in London, where he died in the following year. His career began with several years of brilliant work on the anatomy and physiology of the nervous system. He was almost thirty when, after a period of study under Charcot in Paris, his interests first turned to psychology, and another ten years of clinical work in Vienna (at first in collaboration with Breuer, an older colleague) saw the birth of his creation, psychoanalysis. Freud's life was uneventful, but his ideas have shaped not only many specialist disciplines, but the whole intellectual climate of the twentieth century.
Learn More

Sign up to the Penguin Newsletter

For the latest books, recommendations, author interviews and more