This documentary was first broadcast on BBC Radio 4 in the autumn of 2000 to mark the centenary of Freud’s Interpretation of Dreams. As Freud scholars often remind us, this work was actually published first in 1899, but Freud had the publisher print the date as 1900, perhaps so as to not make the book feel 100 years old already

The Unconscious 1915 Standard Edition Volume XIV Before going into depth on this important paper we can note the fact that at the very outset Freud differentiates between two different kinds of unconscious. He tells us that although what is repressed is unconscious, the unconscious is not simply the sum of the repressed: “The repressed does not cover everything that

On the Universal Tendency to Debasement in the Sphere of Love (Contributions to the Psychology of Love II) 1912 Standard Edition Volume XI Despite the huge volume of psychoanalytic work that deals with questions of sex, sexuality, and more recently sexuation, an interesting remark by Lacan in the late sixties suggests that in dealing with what we might call ‘the

Further Remarks on the Neuro-Psychoses of Defence 1896 Standard Edition Volume III The central thesis of the 1894 paper The Neuro-Psychoses of Defence restated: that it is possible to distinguish mechanisms in hysteria, obsession and hallucinatory psychosis which are not conscious but which serve to defend against an idea that is incompatible with the ego. The terms ‘repression’ is used here

The Neuro-Psychoses of Defence 1894 Standard Edition Volume III Freud’s point of departure in this paper is the contemporary agreement between he, Breuer and Janet, on the idea that in hysteria there is a ‘splitting of consciousness’. Janet’s view is that the split is the result of constitutional weakness, degeneracy, which Janet believes is innate; Freud cites Breuer’s view, in

Introductory Lectures on Psychoanalysis 1915 – 1916 SE Volume XVI As the purpose of these lectures is to introduce the reader to psychoanalytic theory, there is no need to summarise the text – Freud himself has provided the best introduction to his own works. So what follows is a list of some of the arguments against psychoanalysis that Freud confronts