The Freud Reader

894 Pages·1995·39.041 MB·English

by  Sigmund Freud, Peter Gay

THE
FREUD READER
edited b
y
PETER GAY
w • W • NORTON & COMPANY • New York • London
Copyright © 1989 by W. W. Norton & Company, Inc.
All rights reserved.
Printed in the United States of America
Norton paperback edition reissued 1995
Selections on pages 55, 89, and 111 are excerpted by pennission of the publishers
from The Complete Letters 0/ Sigmund Freud to Wilhelm Fliess, 1887-1904, Jeffrey
Moussaieff Masson, ed., Cambridge, Mass.: The Belknap Press of Harvard
University Press, © 1985 Sigmund Freud Copyright, Ud., and Jeffrey Moussaieff
Masson.
Selections on pages 86, 129,539, and 772 are excerpted by pennission of the
publishers Hogarth Press, Ud.
Selections on pages 48, 60, 78, 96,117,172,239,293,297,301,309,351,356,
363,378,387, 394,400,429,436,514,522,545,562,568,572,584,589,661,
666, and 670 are excerpted by pennission of the publishers Basic Books, Inc.
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Freud, Sigrnund, 1856-1939.
[Selections. English. 1989]
The Freud reader / edited by Peter Gay.
p. ern.
I. Psyehoanalysis. 1. Gay, Peter, 1923- 11. Tide.
BF173.F6255 1989
150.19'52-dc19 89-2949
ISBN 0-393-31403-0
W W. Norton & Company, Ine.
500 Fifth Avenue, New York, N.Y. 10110
www.wwnorton.com
W W Norton & Company Ltd.
Castle House, 75/76 Wells Street, London WIT 3QT
1234567890
Ta
Gladys Tapkis
Reader-and Friend

Contents
Preface XI
Introduction Xll1
Sigmund Freud: A Chronology XXXI
A Note on Symbols and Abbreviations xlix
OVERTURE
An Autobiographical Study· 3
PART ONE: MAKING OF A PSYCHOANALYST
Preface to the Translation of Bernheim's Suggestion * 45
Charcot* 48
Draft B 55
Josef Breuer • Anna 0," 60
Katharina • 78
Projeet for a Seientifie Psyehology" 86
Draft K 89
The Aetiology of Hysteria • 96
Letters to Fliess 111
Sereen Memories • 117
PART lWO: THE CLASSIC THEORY
The Interpretation of Dreams * 129
On Dreams * 142
Fragment of an Analysis of a Cas e of Hysteria ("Dora") * 172
Three Essays on the Theory of Sexuality* 239
Charaeter and Anal Erotism 293
Family Romanees 297
" excerpt or abridgement
viii CoNTENTS
Formulations on the Two Principles of Mental
Functioning 301
PART THREE: THERAPY AND TECHNIQUE
Notes Upon a Case of Obsessional Neurosis
("Rat Man") and Process Notes for the Case History * 309
'Wild' Psycho-Analysis 351
Recommendations to Physicians Practicing
Psycho-Analysis 356
On Beginning the Treatment * 363
Observations on Transference-Love* 378
A Special Type of Choice of Object Made by
Men (Contributions to the Psychology of Love I) 387
On the Universal Tendency to Debasement in the
Sphere of Love (Contributions to the Psychology
of Love 11) * 394
From the History of an Infantile Neurosis ("Wolf Man")* 400
PART FOUR: PSYCHOANALYSIS IN CULT U RE
Obsessive Actions and Religious Practices 429
Creative Writers and Day-Dreaming 436
Leonardo da Vinci and a Memory of His Childhood * 44 3
Totem and Taboo * 481
The Theme of the Three Caskets 514
The Moses of Michelangelo* 522
Contribution to a Questionnaire on Reading 539
PART FIVE: TRANSITIONS AND REVISIONS
On Narcissism: An Introduction* 545
Instincts and Their Vicissitudes * 562
Repression * 568
The Unconscious· 572
Mouming and Melancholia 584
Some Character-Types Met with in Psycho-Analytic
Work: [The Exceptions] 589
Beyond the Pleasure Principle * 594
CoNTENTS IX
Group Psychology and the Analysis of the Ego [Introduction] 626
The Ego and the Id*: 628
PART SIX: THE LAST CHAPTER
The Dissolution of the Oedipus Complex 661
Negation 666
Some Psychical Consequences of the'! Anatomical
Distinction Between the Sexes 670
The Question of Lay Analysis [Postscript] 678
The Future of an Illusion 685
Civilization and Its Discontents " 722
Letter to the Burgomaster of PHbor 772
Lecture XXXII: Anxiety and Instinctual Life * 773
Lecture XXXV: The Question of a Weltanschauung· 783
Postscript 796
Selected Bibliography 799
Index 803

Preface
Sigmund Freud-along with Kar! Marx, Char!es Darwin, and Albert
Einstein-is among that small handful of supreme makers of the twen
tieth-century mind whose works should be our prized possession. Yet,
voluminous, diverse, and at times technical, Freud's writings have not
been as widely read as they deserve to be; most of those who may claim
direct acquaintance with them have limited their acquaintance to his
late essay Civilization and Its Discontents. Others have contented them
selves with compendia, popularizations, even comic books attempting
to make Freud and his ideas palatable, even easy. That is a pity, for he
was a great stylist and equally great scientist. Hence it can be pleasurable,
and it is certainly essential, to know Freud, not merely to know about
hirn.
The Freud Reader is designed to repair such unmerited and unfor
tunate neglect. It is the first truly comprehensive survey of Freud's
writings, using not some dated and discredited translations but the au
thoritative versions in the twenty-four-volume Standard Edition of
Freud's Psychological Writings. It is the Standard Edition, the Bible for
psychoanalysts in the English-speaking world, to which students of
Freud, whether psychiatrists or social workers, philosophers or aesthe
ticians, literary critics or cultural anthropologists, historians or political
scientists, inescapably turn. lts notes have proved so copious and so
dependable that arecent twelve-volume German edition of Freud, the
Studienausgabe, has simply copied them; in this Freud Reader, I have
supplemented them only wherever it seemed necessary to offer an even
fuHer explanation.
To make Freud all the more accessible, I have furnished this Reader
with a substantial general introduction designed to place the man and
his work in his time and culture and with a no less substantial chronology
recording not merely all the significant dates in Freud's life but equally
significant dates in European culture and politics. In addition, I have
supplied each selection with introductory paragraphs and conclude the
Reader with a selected bibliography that contains all the titIes I mention
in my introductions, and more. All this explanatory material should
help to pierce the barriers that have hitherto kept a wider public from
xii PREFACE
appreciating Freud's originality, savoring his wit, and recognizing his
versatility .
That versatility is positively awe-inspiring: though, of course, prin
cipally known as the founder of psychoanalysis, Freud did not confine
his thinking, and writing, to the suffering men and women he saw before
hirn on the couch day after day. It is true that his case histories, his
papers on psychoanalytic technique, and his theoretical papers are at
the heart of his thought. But he developed a theory of mind that he
thought explained all of mental activity, normal and neurotic alike, and
he applied that theory to virtually every aspect of culture: to the arts, to
literature, to biography, to mythology, to religion, to politics, to edu
cation, to the law, to prehistory. The Freud Reader, in addition to
covering Freud's psychoanalytic evolution, also faithfully reflects these
wider concems. It does so not with anemic snippets but with lengthy
excerpts, at times with complete papers. Each of the more than fifty
selections in this Reader is a facet of a complex whole-Freud's thought.
All together they should give a fair, far from fragmentary sense of that
whole.
Since Freud's thought developed, matured, and changed, the only
responsible way into that thought, it seems to me, is chronological.
Hence I have chosen to present Freud's writings in striet sequence
with one exception: I have enlisted substantial excerpts from his "Au
tobiographical Study," published in 1925 when Freud was sixty-nine,
to serve as a lively and trustworthy overture to the rest of his work from
the l880s ~o the 1930s.
I owe particular thanks to two friends for helping me shape this Reader:
Richard Kuhns, my former colleague at Columbia University, and Oon
ald Lamm, my publisher and editor.
PETER GAY