Freud At 150

The year 2006 marked the 150th anniversary of the birth of Sigmund Freud, the father of psychoanalysis. To commemorate this event, the Austrian government sponsored a number of academic and cultural events. Among these was a historic gathering of representatives of four major United States psychoanalytic organizations, at which prominent members of these organizations gave presentations surveying the wide-ranging influence that Freud has had on history, contemporary society, culture and the arts. These presentations are reproduced in this book as a collection of essays, literary works and remarkable photos of Freud and his contemporaries presented in recognition of Freud's influence on our world.

'While Freud opened the door on the formative and motivating power of sexuality, contemporary psychoanalysts, with some notable exceptions, have consigned sexuality to the psychoanalytic closet. This book not only re-opens the door on the broad subject of psychosexuality, but also provides fresh insights into heterosexuality, bisexuality, homosexuality, gender identity disorder, transvestism and transsexualism. This publication brings together some of the leading psychoanalytic authorities from around the globe to consider in depth the complex interweaving of identity, gender and sexuality from theoretical, clinical, historical and research perspectives. The author strongly recommends "Identity, Gender and Sexuality" to those looking for a book that does not pull punches. The reader will find a debate about the relative merits of clinical, empirical, and conceptual research, critical assessments of interdisciplinary findings from infant and child development research, embodied cognitive science, academic psychology, neurobiology, genetics, ethology, and other fields of inquiry, and honest and illuminating psychoanalytic case studies. - Donald Campbell

The saturation of the English-speaking world with psychoanalytic concepts was due largely to one brilliant analyst, Ernest Jones. As Freud's disciple, colleague, and biographer-and the man who rescued Freud from the Nazis-he led the international psychoanalytic movement, shifting its vortex from Vienna to London and spreading its influence to Toronto, New York, and Boston. While negotiating the ferocious politics of the movement, Jones also managed an imposing series of liaisons, including an heiress and her maid, analysands, and a “Druid Bride.” Unlike Freud, he never had to wonder, “What do women want?”

Religion, more than sexuality, cast psychoanalysis in controversy and onto the world stage even as it threatened to dismantle the psychoanalytic collective. In the founding years of the first psychoanalytic periodicals, relational dynamics shaped the psychoanalytic corpus on religion. The psychoanalytic pioneers developed their ideas in tandem even if in protest to one another. Religion is a topic worthy of engagement, not least because the symbolized terrain in the history of religion was so often deployed as a vehicle for motivating, disciplining, or editing out a member of the psychoanalytic community in publication. This book offers an interdisciplinary approach to religion and psychology, including a compelling denouement that reveals new narratives about longstanding rumours in the early history of the psychoanalytic movement. Above all, this volume demonstrates that the first generation of psychoanalysts succeeded in writing themselves into the history of religious thought and sacralizing the origins of psychoanalysis.

Frieden explores methods of dream interpretation in the Bible, the Talmud, and in the writings of Sigmund Freud, and brings to light Freud's troubled relationship to his Judaic forerunners. This book reveals unfamiliar associations in intellectual history and challenges received ideas in biblical, Talmudic, and Freudian scholarship. Freud distanced himself from dream interpreters such as Joseph and Daniel by rejecting their intuitive methods and their claims to predict the future. While biblical and Talmudic dream interpretation generally involve prophecy, Freud sought to limit himself to the determination of prior causes in the dreamer's life. Nevertheless, Frieden demonstrates that Freud's strategies of interpretation, and especially his use of "free association," inevitably guide the dreamer toward a future. This resonance between ancient prophecy and modern psychology is merely one example of the concealed relationship between Judaic and psychoanalytic dream interpretation. Frieden shows the role both of actual influences and influences denied by Freud.

The recent upsurge of fresh historical research concerning the early years of psychoanalysis has left many professional readers struggling to keep abreast of the latest findings and more than a little perplexed as to what it all adds up to. Freud and the History of Psychoanalysis addresses this state of affairs by providing in a single volume original essays by fourteen leading historians of psychoanalysis and philosophers of science; it is the most impressive collection of contemporary Freud scholarship yet to appear in print. The contributions span virtually the entirety of Freud's career, from his coming of professional age in Charcot's Paris to his clandestine rendesvous in the Harz Mountains with members of "The Committee" more than 30 years later. The collection also encompasses a host of conceptual issues, ranging from Freud's theory of dream formation to the impact of his conflicting masculine and feminine identifications on his attitude toward treatment. Beyond providing an invaluable overview of Freud's life and times, the volume will challenge readers to deeper reflection on a host of critical episodes and issues that have shaped the special character of the psychoanalytic endeavor. Indispensable as a reference work, Freud and the History of Psychoanalysis constitutes a rewarding and accesible introduction to rigorous historical research. It will be prozed by all who care deeply about the past and future of psychoanalytic theory.

In this challenging collection of essays, the noted historian and philosopher of science John Forrester delves into the disputes over Freud's dead body. With wit and erudition, he tackles questions central to our psychoanalytic century's ways of thinking and living, including the following: Can one speak of a morality of the psychoanalytic life? Are the lives of both analysts and patients doomed to repeat the incestuous patterns they uncover? What and why did Freud collect? Is a history of psychoanalysis possible? By taking nothing for granted and leaving no cliché of psychobabble--theoretical or popular--unturned, Forrester gives us a sense of the ethical surprises and epistemological riddles that a century of tumultuous psychoanalytical debate has often obscured. In these pages, we explore dreams, history, ethics, political theory, and the motor of psychoanalysis as a scientific movement. Forrester makes us feel that the Freud Wars are not merely a vicious quarrel or a fashionable journalistic talking point for the late twentieth century. This hundred years' war is an index of the cultural and scientific climate of modern times. Freud is indeed a barometer for understanding how we conduct our different lives.

Palmer analyses Freud's claim that religion is an obsessional neurosis, considers Jung's rejection of Freud's theory, and looks at Jung's assertion that it is the absence of religion, not its presence, which leads to neurosis.