The Standard Edition of the complete works of the father of psychoanalysis - the only definitive paperback edition on the market. Translated from the German under the General Editorship of James Strachey; in collaboration with Anna Freud; assisted by Alix Strachey and Alan Tyson.
James Strachey Book order (chronological)
Civilization and its discontents
- 112 pages
- 4 hours of reading
Freud's epoch-making insights revolutionized our perception of the self, forming the foundation for psychoanalysis; here he presents his theory of an innate 'death drive' - arguing that civilisation distorts natural aggression to impose a terrible burden of guilt upon us.
The Pelican Freud Library - 10: On Psychopathology
- 368 pages
- 13 hours of reading
Setting forth in rich detail Freud's new theory of anxiety, Inhibitions, Symptoms and Anxiety (1926) is evidence for one of them. In rethinking his earlier work on the subject, Freud saw several types of anxiety at work in the mind and here argues that anxiety causes repression, rather than the other way around.
These two short accounts, written respectively in 1909 and 1926, are a good introduction to psychoanalysis for the general reader, for whom they were originally prepared.