Sigmund Freud: The Basics is an easy-to-read introduction to the life and ideas of Sigmund Freud, the founder of psychoanalysis and a key figure in the history of psychology.
Janet Sayers provides an accessible overview of Freud’s early life and work, beginning with his childhood. Her book includes the stories of his most famous patients: Dora, Little Hans, the Rat Man, Judge Schreber, and the Wolf Man. It also discusses Freud’s key ideas such as psychosexual development, the Oedipus complex, and psychoanalytic treatment. Sayers then covers Freud’s later work, with a description of his observations about depression, trauma and the death instinct, as well as his 1923 theory of the id, ego, and superego. The book includes a glossary of key terms and concludes with examples of how psychoanalysis has been applied to the study of art, literature, film, anthropology, religion, sociology, gender politics, and racism.
Sigmund Freud: The Basics offers an essential introduction for students from all backgrounds seeking to understand Freud’s ideas and for general readers with an interest in psychology. For those already familiar with Freudian ideas, it offers a helpful guide to their interdisciplinary applications and context not least today.
List of Figures
Acknowledgements
Preface
Part I: Pre-psychoanalytic Freud
- Childhood and youth
- Talking cure
- Resistance and repression
- Repressed abuse
- Wishful fantasy
- Dreams
- Freudian slips
- Jokes
- Sex
- Dora’s dreams
- Hans’s phobia
- The rat man’s obsession
- Schreber’s schizophrenia
- The wolf man’s nightmare
- Freud vs. Jung
- Sex and repression
- Freudian symbols
- More about sex
- Symptom formation
- Psychoanalytic treatment
- Mourning and melancholia
- Trauma and the death instinct
- Oedipus, castration, penis envy
- Id-ego-superego
- Art, literature, film
- Anthropology
- Religion
- Sociology
- Gender politics
- Racism
Conclusions to Part I
Part II: Unconscious-conscious dynamics
Conclusions to Part II
Part III: Psychoanalytic case studies
Conclusions to Part III
Part IV: Consolidating psychoanalysis
Conclusions to Part IV
Part V: War and its psychoanalytic aftermath
Conclusions to Part V
Part VI: Beyond clinical psychoanalysis
Conclusions to Part VI
Glossary
References
Index
Biography
Janet Sayers is emeritus professor of psychoanalytic psychology at the University of Kent in Canterbury where she also works as a clinical psychologist for the National Health Service. Her previous Routledge books include Art, Psychoanalysis and Adrian Stokes: A Biography; Freud’s Art: Psychoanalysis Retold; and Boy Crazy: Remembering Adolescence, Therapies and Dreams.
'An enjoyable and informative introduction to Freud’s work, illustrated with pithy examples of his own reasoning which artfully encourages the reader to learn more about psychoanalysis’s founding theorist and practitioner.' – Susie Orbach, author of Fat is a Feminist Issue and many other books, most recently In Therapy: The Unfolding Story
'This book works through the fascinating string of ideas which Freud produced in trying to find access to the hidden unconscious area of the mind by which we all live. With this introductory text Janet Sayers provides comprehensive coverage of the many areas of human life and experience considered by Freud including his false starts, detours, and ways in which both he and his followers addressed issues in developmental and abnormal psychology as well as in the arts, social sciences, and in religion too.' – Bob Hinshelwood, psychoanalyst and emeritus professor, University of Essex
"Overall, in a relatively short space, Sayers has written a balanced, scholarly and accessible introduction to Freud, which I think will appeal to students, as well as psychodynamic and psychoanalytic trainees." - Stephen Crawford, British Journal of Psychotherapy
