Sigmund Freud

Civilization and Its Discontents is one of the last of Freud's books, written in the decade before his death and first published in German in 1929. It is, considered his most brilliant work. In it, he states his views on the broad question of man's place in the world. 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...

Beyond the Pleasure Principle, published in 1920, by world-renowned psychologist Sigmund Freud, marks a major turning point in the author's theoretical approach. Prior to this work, Freud's examination of the forces that drive people focused primarily on the sexual drive, or Eros of man, the life instinct to reproduce that is innate in all humans. Freud had attributed most of human behavior to the seeking of sexual pleasure. In reasoned progression...

Sigmund Freud's seminal psychological works are of huge cultural significance; his theories on dreams have become part of the fabric of our everyday lives.

There exists, of course, few more famous figures in the field of psychology than Sigmund Freud. As the founding father of psychoanalysis, or the clinical method for treating psychopathology through dialogue between a patient and a psychoanalyst, his impact on the field of psychology cannot be overstated. Based on a series of lectures given at the University of Vienna in 1915, "Introductory Lectures on Psychoanalysis" builds upon Freud's earlier work...

En Tótem y tabú (1913), Freud trata de aplicar el método del psicoanálisis a un estudio antropológico en el que pone en conexión el origen del totemismo y la exogamia en las sociedades primitivas, ya que observa un desarrollo psicológico similar en las primeras sociedades humanas, las sociedades salvajes contemporáneas y los pacientes neuróticos. Así, las dos primeras tienen formas equivalentes de organización social y religiosa, esto es:...

Sigmund Freud (1856-1939) was a neurologist and important Austrian psychologist. He is considered the father of psychoanalysis and still a strong influencer of contemporary Social Psychology. The article "Mourning and Melancholia" by Sigmund Freud first appeared in 1917 in the Internationale Zeitschrif fur­Arztlich Psychoanalyse, and was later published in the first set of books of Freud's metapsychological works and General Writings on the Theory...

It was while tracing back the abnormal to the normal state that Professor Freud found how faint the line of demarcation was between the normal and neurotic person, and that the psychopathologic mechanisms so glaringly observed in the psychoneuroses and psychoses could usually be demonstrated in a lesser degree in normal persons. This led to a study of the faulty actions of everyday life and later to the publication of the Psychopathology of Everyday...

In "Mass Psychology and Ego Analysis"Sigmund Freud retrieves the theories of a sociologist of his time named Le Bon. According to Le Bon, the individual gains immense power by associating with a group and feels security in being part of it. However, Freud adds that this sense of belonging leads to a loss of individual consciousness. Thus, the sensations that permeate the group tend to have a great influence and to override individual consciousness....

In "The Interpretation of Dreams", Freud demonstrates that every dream carries a meaning related to the fulfillment of desires. These desires, sublimated in our waking life, are associated with primitive instincts and will manifest symbolically in our dreams. For Sigmund Freud, interpreting a dream means giving it a sense, that is, adjusting it to the chain of our mental faculties and gaining a better understanding of what we truly are. Filled with...

When psychoanalytic investigation, which usually contents itself with frail human material, approaches the great personages of humanity, it is not impelled to it by motives which are often attributed to it by laymen. It does not strive 'to blacken the radiant and to drag the sublime into the mire'; it finds no satisfaction in diminishing the distance between the perfection of the great and the inadequacy of the ordinary objects. But it cannot help...