The Essentials of Psycho-analysis (Vintage Classics)

In this selection of her fathers writings Anna Freud has defined and included, in a single volume, the essential, irreducible elements of psychoanalysis. She begins with the most appropriate of Freuds own introductory essays, The Question of Lay Analysis, and follows the sequence of themes that he adopted in that workthe meaning of dreams, the concept of the unconscious, instinctual and sexual life, the structure of the personality, defense mechanisms, and symptom-formation. The result, with her own lucid commentaries supplementing her fathers writing in the authorized translations by James Strachey, is a coherent, manageable, and authoritative guide to the principal themes and concepts of psycho-nalysis.