Book
Introductory Lectures on Psycho-Analysis
Vorlesungen zur Einführung in die Psychoanalyse
Twenty-eight lectures that Freud delivered at the University of Vienna in the winter terms of 1915–16 and 1916–17 to an audience of physicians and lay listeners, published in three parts by Hugo Heller in 1916–17. They became his most widely read general account of psychoanalysis. The first part treats parapraxes, such as slips and errors, as acts that carry meaning. The second sets out the theory of dreams: the dream censorship, symbolism, the dream-work and wish-fulfilment. The third offers a general theory of the neuroses, moving from the sense of symptoms, resistance and repression through the sexual life of human beings, the development of the libido and its organisations, regression and fixation, and the paths by which symptoms form, to anxiety, narcissism and the libido theory, and finally transference and analytic therapy.
Main ideas
- Parapraxes are not chance accidents but meaningful psychical acts.
- Dreams are explained through the dream censorship, symbolism, the dream-work and wish-fulfilment.
- Neurotic symptoms have a sense, and resistance and repression stand in the way of reaching it.
- The sexual life of human beings and the development of the libido through its organisations underlie the neuroses, with regression and fixation shaping the paths to symptom formation.
- Anxiety, narcissism and the libido theory are treated within the general theory of the neuroses.
- The lectures close with transference and analytic therapy.
What it shows
- 1901
Sigmund Freud introduced Parapraxis
Freud set out the theory of slips in Zur Psychopathologie des Alltagslebens, printed in the Monatsschrift für Psychiatrie und Neurologie in 1901 and as a book in 1904: the forgetting of names and intentions, slips of the tongue and pen, misreadings, bungled and chance actions are treated as meaningful acts with unconscious motives rather than accidents. In the Dora case he refers readers back to that treatise, and Jones in 1908 cites its sections on slips of the tongue and pen, bungled actions and chance actions as Freud's.
- 1900
Sigmund Freud introduced Psychical reality
The closing pages of Die Traumdeutung speak of psychical reality as a particular form of existence not to be confused with material reality. In the Introductory Lectures (Lecture XXIII) Freud states that in the world of the neuroses psychical reality is the decisive kind.