Rather odd
|
|
I would prefer it if it was written in a 3rd person's point of view. Someone who has studied Mr F's work & could talk us though it. This book was in the 1st person's point - Mr F himself, & I found the translation a little strange. Definately not a beginners book.
|
|
Elegant but insufficient
|
Dr. Freud - the man who took Nietzsche's call to make all philosophy physiological to its logical conclusion - here condenses his long and difficult work `The Interpretation of Dreams' into a pamphlet accessible to the non-scientific masses.
This book, which is barely forty pages long, barely touches upon the many consequences of our unconscious life, but does explain his theories of wish-fulfilment, repression and dream-work in a succinct and skillful manner. His theory of the `dream-work' - how latent unconscious content is sublimated into the manifest dream, and what that can tell us about our secret desires and motivations - is ingenious, even beautiful, but so much detail is left out that his theories can't be put to any use. There is no mention of structural theory or psychosexuality, nor are there any case studies besides a rather strange anecdote about his own dreams.
Freud constantly claimed that he was an objective scientist, and lamented that his theories were so widely misunderstood, but this book does him no favours. Like Darwin and Einstein, Freud was more concerned with achieving fame and influence in his own lifetime than he was with scientific rigour, and so was willing to risk diluting his own work in favour of reaching a wide audience. To read this book alone will not give any useful insight into the dream-life or the unconscious, but will rather make a person feel that his dreams give a glimpse of a dark, mysterious and portentous otherworld - a superstitious view no different from the prophetic dreams we find in the Bible.
The newcomer is recommended to couple this book with the excellent `What Freud Really Said' by David Stafford-Clark and to then attempt `The Interpretation of Dreams'.
|
|
|
United States | 
United Kingdom | 
Canada