Book description
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.
Sigmund Freud was born in 1856 and died in exile in London in
1939. As a writer and doctor he remains one of the informing voices of
the twentieth century.
Adam Phillips was formerly Child Psychotherapist at Charing Cross
Hospital in London. He is the author of several books on
psychoanalysis including On Kissing, Tickling and Being Bored,
Darwin's Worms, Promises, Promises, Houdini's Box and, most recently,
Going Sane.
