i liked civilizations and its discontents when i read it a bunch of years ago for school...

i used to post here at the time and had a quote in my signature

people picked on me for it

but it was a good quote

but with all psychoanalysis
it's grains of truth burried in miles of fluff and projection

i've been considering picking it up agai
cos i read another psychoanalytic classic a few weeks ago
and it made me slightly nostalgic for the days of taking psych/soci courses

a whole book on freud Is a tough read. start with 'forgetting things', i really liked that.
i'd stay away from jung. he gets on my tits.

Mentioning that Freud was a cokehead is silly, and completely irrelevant. Although it's known that cocaine alters dopamine levels, I doubt it affected him enough to discredit his work.

Freud haters are annoying. I'm not a Freudian or anything, but i've read a lot of his works and I find them very relevant and applicable to my life, as well as society in general.

Cilization and its Discontents is an explanation of the workings of world and our role in it. Its an analysis of the cultural and cognitive. I think it's quite fascinating, while I don't totally agree with some of it - most of it I do. It answered so many questions for me. I never understood the need for sports until i read this book. It exposes the paradox of society, which utimately explains a significant amount of human discontent. For this and many other reasons I think it's an essential text.

Luciana I would start here, rather than reading books on Freud. I've decided that most books about him and his works are a little baised and subtly so. Its best to read his works for yourself, rather than someone elses interpretations. A lot of it can be difficult, but when i read difficult stuff I often take notes and look up the references and this helps a lot.

As mentioned, Freud's Interpretations of Dreams is really interesting. But just be sure to take a liberal approach to this text, as you should with his other works too. I use as a tool of reference really. The index is the best part for me. There is no way I could read it in it's entirety. I lose interest. But comparing my experiences with his interpretations are neat.

Also I would try reading his essays on sexuality. they're really interesting, at times bizarre, but interesting nonetheless. i bought this book a long time ago, and it's one of my favorites. He discusses infantile sexuality and the psychosexual stages (among other things) at length. Quick read.

A lot of people are quick to discredit his theories simply because of their "shocking" nature. Common sense tells us that with most schools of thought/philosophy there will always be exceptions, and we are still allowed to think for ourselves.

I'm a therapist and actually get freud ( god that sounds snooty and pretensious but i didn't mean it like that) anyway yes he was a cokehead and i can't even begin to guess which theories were done while high vs sober, siggy was a bit intense, masoganyst (Sp) definately but at the same time he was an extremely intelligent man who was NOT a psychiatrist he was actually trained in neurobio (or something like that) and applied his scientific education to his theories of human nature.... i find him to be just as fascinating as his theories, but anyway i've found that like eveything else in this world some of it can apply, some of it does and doesn't apply and some of it i just don't get enough to form a valid educated opinion on, but if you buy into freudian theory or not its still an interesting read imo.
i actally have a sigmund freud action figure _same company that makes jesus and moses and edgar allen poe action figures-on my desk at work, the patients look at it and crack up which is a good ice breaker


btw an equally interesting read would be to read stuff by karen horney .... very different perspectives from a woman

here's a bit on her http://www.psy.pdx.edu/PsiCafe/KeyTheorists/Horney.htm

Karen Horney was an American psychiatrist boorn in Germany. She Received her M.D. at the Univiversity of Berlin in 1913. She married Oscar Horney in 1909. Prior to her arrival (1932) in the United States, she was secretary of the Berlin Psychoanalytic Institute, where she taught for 12 years. Associate director (1932–34) of the Chicago Institute for Psychoanalysis, Horney then came to New York City, where she lectured at the New School for Social Research. She deviated from orthodox Freudian analysis by emphasizing environmental and cultural, rather than biological, factors in the genesis of neurosis. Anxiety, she held, is created by anything that jeopardizes a person's means of gaining security. The neurotic's rigid adherence to his safety devices protects him in some ways but renders him helpless toward other possible dangers. To further her work based on these beliefs, she founded (1941) and became dean of the American Institute of Psychoanalysis. Her works include The Neurotic Personality of Our Time (1937), Self-Analysis (1942), Our Inner Conflicts (1945), and Neurosis and Human Growth (1950).

I've never wanted a penis.

I mean, as part of my own body.

I love the title of this thread. I relate to it completely- though my relation is through novel not theory. I am in the middle of "educating myself" by reading what I consider to be the classics that my english classes neglected to mention. So I have read Crime and Punishment and ADORED it. But now I am in the middle of Tale of Two Cities, and I have been in the middle of it for about two weeks now. I have only a vauge concept of what's going on. No matter what I do I can't focus on actually reading the book and understanding what is happening. I know this is slightly different than what you experienced with Freud (that was me and Durkheim once), but it's still a story about me trying to culture myself and ending up a dumb lump. It happens.