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Introduction to Psychoanalysis or Introductory Lectures on Psycho-Analysis (Template:Lang-de) is a set of lectures given by Sigmund Freud 1915-17 (published 1916-17), which became the most popular and widely translated of his works. The 28 lectures offered an elementary stock-taking of his views of the unconscious, dreams, and the theory of neuroses at the time of writing, as well as offering some new technical material to the more advanced reader.

Some of the positions outlined here would subsequently be altered or revised in Freud's later work; and in 1932 he offered a second set of seven lectures numbered from 29-35 - New Introductory Lectures on Psychoanalysis - as complement (though these were never read aloud and featured a different, sometimes more polemical style of presentation.)

Contents

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.

Appraisals

• Karl Abraham considered the lectures elementary in the best sense, for presenting the core elements of psychoanalysis in an accessible way.

• G. Stanley Hall in his preface to the 1920 American translation wrote:

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.

• Freud himself was typically self-deprecating about the finished work, describing it privately as "coarse work, intended for the multitude".

Notes

1. Editor's Introduction, Sigmund Freud, Introductory Lectures on Psycho-Analysis (PFL 1) p.31
2. Editor's Introduction, Sigmund Freud, Introductory Lectures on Psycho-Analysis (PFL 1) p.32-3
3. Peter Gay, Freud (1989) p. 369
4. Freud. Sigmund: Introduction to Psychoanalysis, PREFACE BY G. STANLEY HALL PRESIDENT, 1920
5. Peter Gay, Freud (1989) p. 369

• Books by Sigmund Freud
• 1901 books
• Books about psychoanalysis