Introduction to Psychoanalysis

Introduction to Psychoanalysis (Vorlesungen zur Einführung in die Psychoanalyse) is one of the most famous works of Sigmund Freud, calculated for a wide readership. In its first part (from 1st to 28th lecture) Freud enthusiastically outlines his approach to the unconscious, dreams, the theory of neuroses and some technical issues in the form in which it was formulated at the time of reading the lectures in Vienna in 1916-1917. From some positions outlined here Freud subsequently refused, many supplements and develops or revises in his later works. The second part ("new lecture series, from 29th to 35th) has never been read before to public, it features a different style of presentation, sometimes requiring the reader to training, sometimes polemical.

This work offers the reader acquainted with the concepts of Freud, to trace the logic of his arguments and to join his conclusions. The form of "Lectures" Freud allows lively polemical, is constantly engaging the reader in a discussion to justify their views, back them up with examples from life and from clinical practice, to identify not clarifying and weaknesses of the theory needs further elaboration.

According to the preface:

These twenty-eight lectures to laymen are elementary and almost conversational. Freud sets forth with a frankness almost startling the difficulties and limitations of psychoanalysis, and also describes its main methods and results as only a master and originator of a new school of thought can do. These dis courses are at the same time simple and almost confidential, and they trace and sum up the results of thirty years of devoted and painstaking research. While they are not at all controversial, we incidentally see in a clearer light the distinctions between the master and some of his distinguished pupils.