A General Introduction to Psychoanalysis: A History of Psychoanalytic Theory,

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Freud's timeless lectures on psychoanalytic thought, dream interpretation, and his theory of the neuroses are presented here in their authoritative translation to English by G. Stanley Hall. First delivered and published between 1915 and 1917, these lectures see a mature Freud expound on his theories and practices which at the time were revolutionary. While generally outdated in the modern setting, the methods detailed were valuable as a benchmark upon which future psychologists and psychiatrists built in subsequent years. Designed to introduce the enthusiastic layman to the psychoanalytic techniques Freud spent decades developing and refining, A General Introduction to Psychoanalysis ranges across several key tenets of Freudian thought. Several lectures concern the means by which dreams may be interpreted as an insight into the state of the patient's psyche, with symbols and memories of the distant past particularly cited.

Sigmund Freud (1856-1939) was the Austrian founder of psychoanalysis, a method for psychological therapy and a theory of human nature. His conception of the unconscious, of the relevance of dreams, and of the role played by our drives for pleasure and aggression as well as his trenchant critique of culture shape our self-understanding to this day.