Cesare L. Musatti Books

"Overview: Freud's seminal volume of twentieth-century cultural thought grounded in psychoanalytic theory, now with a new introduction by Christopher Hitchens. Written in the decade before Freud's death, Civilization and Its Discontents may be his most famous and most brilliant work. It has been praised, dissected, lambasted, interpreted, and reinterpreted. Originally published in 1930, it seeks to answer several questions fundamental to human society and its organization: What influences led to the creation of civilization? Why and how did it come to be? What determines civilization's trajectory? Freud's theories on the effect of the knowledge of death on human existence and the birth of art are central to his work. Of the various English translations of Freud's major works to appear in his lifetime, only Norton's Standard Edition, under the general editorship of James Strachey, was authorized by Freud himself. This new edition includes both an introduction by the renowned cultural critic and writer Christopher Hitchens as well as Peter Gay's classic biographical note on Freud."

Among the first of Sigmund Freud's many contributions to psychology and psychoanalysis was The Interpretation of Dreams, published in 1900, and considered his greatest work — even by Freud himself. Aware, however, that it was a long and difficult book, he resolved to compile a more concise and accessible version of his ideas on the interpretation of dreams. That shorter work is reprinted here. Since its publication, generations of readers and students have turned to this volume for an authoritative and coherent account of Freud's theory of dreams as distorted wish fulfillment.After contrasting the scientific and popular views of dreams, Freud illustrates the ways in which dreams can be shown to have been influenced by the activities or thoughts of the preceding day. He considers the effect on dreams of such mental mechanisms as condensation, dramatization, displacement, and regard for intelligibility. In addition, the author offers perceptive insights into repression, the three classes of dreams, and censorship within the dream.Students and psychologists will welcome this inexpensive edition of an always-relevant work by the father of modern psychoanalysis. This volume will also appeal to anyone interested in dreams of the workings of the unconscious mind.

Con la sua personalissima intonazione arguta, Cesare L. Musatti era solito ricordare come lui e la psicoanalisi fossero gemelli. Il 20 settembre 1897 Sigmund Freud passò in treno davanti alla casa di Dolo, sulla riviera del Brenta, in cui stava per venire al mondo il suo più eminente seguace italiano. Sarebbe nato il giorno successivo, quando Freud, di ritorno a Vienna, scriveva all'amico Wilhelm Fliess la lettera poi ritenuta l'atto inaugurale di una conoscenza sovvertitrice, pronta a sfidare i filisteismi annidati nella scienza dell'epoca. Il settimino gracile che non sembrava in grado di sopravvivere e l'inaudito scandaglio della psiche, allora sogguardato dai più con sospetto, erano destinati entrambi a una lunga esistenza. Della gemellarità ideale Musatti fece una fratellanza di pensiero e di vita. E affratellato a lui si sentirà anche il lettore di questa raccolta di scritti dispersi o introvabili, che si dispongono con naturalezza centripeta nel libro rappresentativo di un intero percorso. Chi voglia incontrare il teorico, il clinico, l'interprete del proprio tempo, qui sarà colpito dall'affabilità di un vero Maestro che, senza montare mai in cattedra, dà lezione di misura innanzi tutto nel parlare di sé e dei pazienti, dal momento che ogni analisi è insieme autoanalisi.