A General Introduction to Psychoanalysis

A GENERAL INTRODUCTION TO PSYCHOANALYSIS is one of the most famous works of Sigmund Freud. In it 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. 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 discourses 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.