First Published in 1999. Psychoanalysis first developed as a method of therapy in the strict medical sense. Freud had discovered that certain circumscribed disorders that have no discernible organic basis-such as hysterical convulsions, phobias, depressions, drug addictions, functional stomach upsets --can be cured by uncovering the unconscious factors that underlie them. In the course of time disturbances of this kind were summarily called neurotic. Therefore humility as well as hope is required in any discussion of the possibility of psychoanalytic self-examination. It is the object of this book to raise this question seriously, with all due consideration for the difficulties involved.

What if Freud had left a final paper declaring that morality arises not from the guilt caused by Oedipal desires but, instead, from fear of the unchallengeable authority demonstrated in megalomania? CUNY history professor Rosenfield makes this the premise of his novel debut--and produces a wonderful, chewy, intellectual delight.

Sigmund Freud’s discovery of psychoanalysis explores links between Freud’s development of his thinking and theory and his personal emotional journey. It follows his early career as a medical student, researcher and neurologist, and then as a psychotherapist, to focus on the critical period 1895-1900. During these years Freud submitted himself to the process that has become known as his ‘self-analysis’, and developed the core of his psychoanalytic theory. Drawing on Freud’s letters to his friend and confidant Wilhelm Fliess, and on selected psychoanalytic writings in particular his ‘dream of Irma’s injection’, Paul Schimmel formulates psychoanalytic dimensions to the biographical ‘facts’ of Freud’s life. In 1900 Freud wrote that he was ‘not a thinker’ but ‘a conquistador’. In reality he was both, and was engaged in a lifelong emotional struggle to bring these contradictory sides of his personality into relationship. His psychoanalytic discoveries are conceptualized in the context of his need to achieve integration within his psyche, and in particular to forge a more creative collaboration between ‘conquistador’ and ‘thinker’. Sigmund Freud’s discovery of psychoanalysis will be of interest to psychoanalysts, psychoanalytic psychotherapists, academics and teachers of psychoanalysis, and to all serious students of the mind.

In this book, originally published in 1963, Dr Fine sets out to describe what Freud said, and to re-evaluate his views critically in the light of the best knowledge of the time. Freud’s numerous changes of view, his constant searching for the truth wherever it might lead him, as well as his resolute adherence to certain hard-won positions once he had achieved them, are all skilfully traced. Freud’s intellectual Odyssey is divided into four periods. From 1886 to 1895 he was a neurologist investigating hysteria and other ‘nervous’ disorders. Then came his self-analysis, from 1896 to 1899, the real matrix from which psycho-analysis grew. The first psycho-analytic system of psychology was developed in the period from 1900 to 1914. The remainder of his life, from 1914 to 1939, was devoted to the elaboration of ego psychology, and heart of contemporary psycho-analysis. Dr Fine undertook, in writing this book, the formidable task of examining the whole body of Freud’s thought, to clarify what he said, and to review his ideas critically in the light of the best available existing knowledge. As he says ‘In this process of criticism I have tried to specify which aspects of Freud have stood the test of time and which have not.’ ‘So far as I can see no one has ever before taken the trouble to ask: "What did Freud actually say? How does what Freud said stand up in terms of what we now know?"’ In answering these questions, Dr Fine develops a major thesis that all modern psycho-analysis derives from Freud, though it has moved far in many different directions. The contention is that emphasis on schools is misleading and has obscured the actual historical growth of the science. As he states in his Preface to this volume, Dr Fine’s conviction is: ‘By building on Freud’s fundamental insights, we can move on most readily to empirical research and thus construct a more satisfactory science of psychology.’

Figures of the Unconscious, No. 8Sigmund Freud, in his search for the origins of the sense of guilt in individual life and culture, regularly speaks of "reading a dark trace," thus referring to the Oedipus myth as a myth about the problem of human guilt. In Freud's view, this sense of guilt is a trace, a path, that leads deep into the individual's mental state, into childhood memories, and into the prehistory of culture and religion. Herman Westerink follows this trace and analyzes Freud's thought on the sense of guilt as a central issue in his work, from the earliest studies on the moral and "guilty" characters of the hysterics, via later complex differentiations within the concept of the sense of guilt, and finally to Freud's conception of civilization's discontents and Jewish sense of guilt. The sense of guilt is a key issue in Freudian psychoanalysis, not only in relation to other key concepts in psychoanalytic theory but also in relation to Freud's debates with other psychoanalysts, including Carl Jung and Melanie Klein.

The contrast between Individual Psychology and Social or Group Psychology, which at a first glance may seem to be full of significance, loses a great deal of its sharpness when it is examined more closely. It is true that Individual Psychology is concerned with the individual man and explores the paths by which he seeks to find satisfaction for his instincts; but only rarely and under certain exceptional conditions is Individual Psychology in a position to disregard the relations of this individual to others. In the individual's mental life someone else is invariably involved, as a model, as an object, as a helper, as an opponent, and so from the very first Individual Psychology is at the same time Social Psychology as wellÑin this extended but entirely justifiable sense of the words. The relations of an individual to his parents and to his brothers and sisters, to the object of his love, and to his physicianÑin fact all the relations which have hitherto been the chief subject of psycho-analytic researchÑmay claim to be considered as social phenomena; and in this respect they may be contrasted with certain other processes, described by us as 'narcissistic', in which the satisfaction of the instincts is partially or totally withdrawn from the influence of other people. The contrast between social and narcissisticÑBleuler would perhaps call them 'autistic'Ñmental acts therefore falls wholly within the domain of Individual Psychology, and is not well calculated to differentiate it from a Social or Group Psychology.