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...

First published in 1924, Otto Rank's The Trauma of Birth took as its starting point a note that Freud added to his The Interpretation of Dreams : "Moreover, the act of birth is the first experience of anxiety, and thus the source and prototype of the affect of anxiety". Rank set out to identify "the ultimate biological basis of the psychical," the very "nucleus of the unconscious" (p. xxiii). For him this was the physical event of birth, whereby the...

Considerada como una de las obras más influyentes del siglo xx en el campo de la psicología, El malestar en la cultura indaga en el efecto que sobre las pulsiones del individuo ha tenido el desarrollo de la civilización, como moldeadora pero también como represora del comportamiento humano. En efecto, Freud defiende la existencia de un antagonismo irreconciliable entre las pulsiones agresivas, innatas en los individuos, y la cultura, pues esta,...

Social psychologist Erich Fromm probes deep into the roots of religion to find its humanistic essence In 1950, Erich Fromm attempted to free religion from its social function and to develop a new understanding of religious phenomena. Rather than analyzing what people believe in-whether they're monotheistic, polytheistic, or atheistic-Fromm presents an idea of what religion means in secular terms.   In his timeless and straightforward style, Fromm...

First published in German in 1927 and in English in 1928, "The Future of an Illusion" is Sigmund Freud's seminal work on the psychology of religion in which Freud discusses the history of and psychological basis for religion. Chief amongst the arguments of the work is that religion is ultimately the result of the psychological struggle against the ultimate fate of life, death. So strong is the desire to give meaning to life that our ancestors created...

Reframes the terms of cultural analysis with a fresh take on transference theory in Freud and Lacan and a critical engagement with the philosophy of Alain Badiou. Both Freud and Lacan defined the transference as the ego's last stand-its final desperate attempt to keep the truth of the unconscious at bay. Both also viewed the transference as a social phenomenon. In The Structures of Love James Penney argues that transference is the concept with which...

"Whether inscribed within the context of capitalist or neoliberal logic and its imperative to "enjoy," as a critique of all forms of hetero-normativity, a liberating force in a positive reading of biopolitics, the point of inflection in the ethics of psychoanalysis, or articulated in the knot of the sinthome, the concept of jouissance is either the diagnosis, response, or solution for a wide range of contemporary discontents. Why does jouissance occupy...

Many of the earliest books, particularly those dating back to the 1900's and before, are now extremely scarce and increasingly expensive.

Renowned psychoanalyst Erich Fromm investigates the universal language of symbols, expressed through dream and myths, and how it illuminates our humanity. 
In this study, Erich Fromm opens up the world of symbolic language, “the one foreign language that each of us must learn.” Understanding symbols, he posits, helps us reach the hidden layers of our individual personalities, as well as connect with our common...

"Requiem for the Ego recounts Freud's last great attempt to 'save' the autonomy of the ego, which drew philosophical criticism from the most prominent philosophers of the period--Adorno, Heidegger, and Wittgenstein. Despite their divergent orientations, each contested the ego's capacity to represent mental states through word and symbol to an agent surveying its own cognizance. By discarding the subject-object divide as a model of the mind, they dethroned...