Freud rarely treated psychotic patients or psychoanalyzed people just from their writings, but he had a powerful and imaginative understanding of their condition--revealed, most notably, in this analysis of a remarkable memoir. In 1903, Judge Daniel Schreber, a highly intelligent and cultured man, produced a vivid account of his nervous illness dominated by the desire to become a woman, terrifying delusions about his doctor, and a belief in his own special relationship with God. Eight years later, Freud's penetrating insight uncovered the impulses and feelings Schreber had about his father,...

The most trivial slips of the tongue or pen, Freud believed, can reveal our secret ambitions, worries, and fantasies. The Psychopathology of Everyday Liferanks among his most enjoyable works. Starting with the story of how he once forgot the name of an Italian painter and how a young acquaintance mangled a quotation from Virgil through fears that his girlfriend might be pregnant it brings together a treasure trove of muddled memories, inadvertent actions, and verbal tangles. Amusing, moving, and deeply revealing of the repressed, hypocritical Viennese society of his day, Freud's...

Why do we laugh? The answer, argued Freud in this groundbreaking study of humor, is that jokes, like dreams, satisfy our unconscious desires. The Joke and Its Relation to the Unconsciousexplains how jokes provide immense pleasure by releasing us from our inhibitions and allowing us to express sexual, aggressive, playful, or cynical instincts that would otherwise remain hidden. In elaborating this theory, Freud brings together a rich collection of puns, witticisms, one-liners, and anecdotes, which, as Freud shows, are a method of giving ourselves away.
For more than seventy years,...

When a disturbed young Russian man came to Freud for treatment, the analysis of his childhood neuroses--most notably a dream about wolves outside his bedroom window--eventually revealed a deep-seated trauma. It took more than four years to treat him, and "The Wolfman" became one of Freud's most famous cases. This volume also contains the case histories of a boy's fear of horses and the Ratman's violent fear of rats, as well as the essay "Some Character Types," in which Freud draws on the work of Shakespeare, Ibsen, and Nietzsche to demonstrate different kinds of resistance to therapy. Above...

Freud's landmark writings on love and sexuality, including the famous case study of Dora newly translated and in one volume for the first time
This original collection brings together the most important writings on the psychology of love by one of the great thinkers of the twentieth century. Sigmund Freud's discussions of the ways in which sexuality is always psychosexuality that there is no sexuality without fantasy have changed social, cultural, and intellectual attitudes toward erotic life. Among the influential pieces included here are -On Female Sexuality, - -The Taboo...

Freud was fascinated by the mysteries of creativity and the imagination. The groundbreaking works that comprise The Uncanny present some of his most influential explorations of the mind. In these pieces Freud investigates the vivid but seemingly trivial childhood memories that often "screen" deeply uncomfortable desires; the links between literature and daydreaming; and our intensely mixed feelings about things we experience as "uncanny." Also included is Freud's celebrated study of Leonardo Da Vinci-his first exercise in psychobiography.
For more than seventy years, Penguin has...

Hysteria the tormenting of the body by the troubled mind is among the most pervasive of human disorders; yet, at the same time, it is the most elusive. Freud s recognition that hysteria stemmed from traumas in the patient s past transformed the way we think about sexuality. Studies in Hysteria is one of the founding texts of psychoanalysis, revolutionizing our understanding of love, desire, and the human psyche. As full of compassionate human interest as of scientific insight, these case histories are also remarkable, revelatory works of literature.
For more than seventy years, Penguin...

The Ego and the Id ranks high among the works of Freud's later years. The heart of his concern is the ego, which he sees battling with three forces: the id, the super-ego, and the outside world. Of the various English translations of Freud's major works to appear in his lifetime, only one was authorized by Freud himself: The Standard Edition of the Complete Psychological Works of Sigmund Freud under the general editorship of James Strachey. Freud approved the overall editorial plan, specific renderings of key words and phrases, and the addition of valuable notes, from...

Totem and Taboo (1913), first published as a series of four articles between 1912 and 1913, is among Freud's most dazzling speculative texts.

While in this book Freud tells some good stories with his customary verve and economy, its point is wholly serious.