The Cambridge Companion to Freud

Does Freud still have something to teach us? The premise of this volume is that he most certainly does. Approaching Freud from not only the philosophical but also historical, psychoanalytical, anthropological, and sociological perspectives, the contributors show us how Freud gave us a new and powerful way to think about human thought and action. They consider the context of Freud’s thought and the structure of his arguments to reveal how he made sense of ranges of experience generally neglected or misunderstood. All the central topics of Freud’s work from sexuality and neurosis to morality, art, and culture are covered.

Table of Contents

1 Freud: The psychoarcheology of civilizations

2 Seduced and abandoned: The rise and fall of Freud’s seduction theory

3 Freud’s androids

4 The interpretation of dreams

5 The unconscious

6 The development and vicissitudes of Freud’s ideas on the Oedipus complex

7 Freud and perversion

8 Morality and the internalized other

9 Freud on women

10 Freud and the understanding of art

11 Freud’s anthropology: A reading of the “cultural books”

12 Freud’s later theory of civilization: Changes and implications

13 In fairness to Freud: A critical notice of The Foundations of Psychoanalysis, by Adolf Griinbaum

About the Author

Jerome Neu is Professor of Humanities at the University of Califonia, Santa Cruz. He is the author of several books including A Tear is an Intellectual Thing and Sticks and Stones: The Philosophy of Insults.