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A review by colin_cox
Five Lectures on Psycho-Analysis by Sigmund Freud
5.0
In 1909, Sigmund Freud delivered a series of lectures in Worcester, Massachusetts, published the following year as Five Lectures on Psycho-Analysis. For readers familiar with psychoanalysis, this short book offers little in the way of new information; however, it reinforces several important psychoanalytic concepts, such as repression, sublimation, and the unconscious. Freud also explores particular ideas he later develops in Civilization and Its Discontents: "People are in general not candid over sexual matters. They do not show their sexuality freely, but to conceal it they wear a heavy overcoat woven of a tissue of lies, as though the weather were bad in the world of sexuality...It is a fact that sun and wind are not favourable to sexual activity in this civilized world of ours; none of us can reveal his erotism freely to others" (53).
More than anything, Five Lectures on Psycho-Analysis attempts to validate psychoanalysis as a practice. Freud accomplishes this by suggesting that psychoanalysis does not create problems; it simply diagnosis the problems it sees in the civilized world. For example, regarding transference (a combination of affection and hostility directed by the patient toward the analyst), Freud writes, "You must not suppose, moreover, that the phenomenon of transference...is created by psychoanalytic influence. Transference arises spontaneously in all human relationships just as it does between the patient and the physician...psychoanalysis does not create it, but merely reveals it to consciousness and gains control of it in order to guide psychical processes towards the desired goal" (71). Again, Freud emphasizes many of these points in Civilization and Its Discontents, but in Five Lectures on Psycho-Analysis Freud wants to challenge some of the attacks against psychoanalysis. For Freud, instead of creating these problems, psychoanalysis names them.
Another reason to read Five Lectures on Psycho-Analysis is for what it omits. Freud says little, which is not to say nothing, of the Oedipal Complex in Five Lectures on Psycho-Analysis. This is surprising since the Oedipal Complex is one of psychoanalysis's most famous and misunderstood concepts.
More than anything, Five Lectures on Psycho-Analysis attempts to validate psychoanalysis as a practice. Freud accomplishes this by suggesting that psychoanalysis does not create problems; it simply diagnosis the problems it sees in the civilized world. For example, regarding transference (a combination of affection and hostility directed by the patient toward the analyst), Freud writes, "You must not suppose, moreover, that the phenomenon of transference...is created by psychoanalytic influence. Transference arises spontaneously in all human relationships just as it does between the patient and the physician...psychoanalysis does not create it, but merely reveals it to consciousness and gains control of it in order to guide psychical processes towards the desired goal" (71). Again, Freud emphasizes many of these points in Civilization and Its Discontents, but in Five Lectures on Psycho-Analysis Freud wants to challenge some of the attacks against psychoanalysis. For Freud, instead of creating these problems, psychoanalysis names them.
Another reason to read Five Lectures on Psycho-Analysis is for what it omits. Freud says little, which is not to say nothing, of the Oedipal Complex in Five Lectures on Psycho-Analysis. This is surprising since the Oedipal Complex is one of psychoanalysis's most famous and misunderstood concepts.