A General Introduction to Psychoanalysis - Paperback

by G. Stanley Hall (Translator), Sigmund Freud LL D. (Author)

In his three-part Introductory Lectures, by beginning with a discussion of Freudian slips in the first part, moving on to dreams in the second, and only tackling the neuroses in the third, Freud succeeded in presenting his ideas as firmly grounded in the common-sense world of everyday experience. Making full use of the lecture-form, Freud was able to engage in a lively polemic with his audience, constantly engaging the reader/listener in a discussion, so as to take on their views and deal with their possible objections.The work allows the reader acquainted with the concepts of Freud to trace the logic of his arguments afresh and follow his conclusions, backed as they were with examples from life and from clinical practice. But Freud also identified elements of his theory requiring further elaboration, as well as bringing in new material, for example on symbolism and primal fantasies, taking up with the latter a train of thought he would continue in his re-working of The Wolfman. In the New Introductory Lectures, those on dreams and anxiety/instinctual life offered clear accounts of Freud's latest thinking, while the role of the Superego received an update in lecture 31.More popular treatments of occultism, psychoanalytic applications and its status as a science helped complete the volume.