Sigmund Freud

Sigmund Freud om kærlighed og tro, sexualitet og religion. Kærlighedslivets psykologi er tre små afhandlinger om nogle af de ubehagelige sider af sexuallivet, som fortsat holder liv i mange samlivsbrevkasser, psykologer og sexologer. Det er problemer med frigiditet og svigtende potens, med sexualangst og komplekse forelskelser (objektvalg). En illusions fremtid rummer Freuds opgør med religionen, som han ser som et system af ønskeforestillinger, der undertrykker det psykiske liv, komplicerer sexualiteten og generelt gør folk dummere, end de behøver at være. Som rationalist ser Freud frem til en tid uden illusioner og knuder i sindet.

Sigmund Freud's theory of dreams suggests that dreams represent unconscious desires, thoughts, wish fulfillment, and motivations. Dreams, in Freud's view, are all forms of "wish fulfillment" - attempts by the unconscious to resolve a conflict of some sort, whether something recent or something from the recesses of the past. The information in the unconscious is in an unruly and often disturbing form, a "censor" in the preconscious will not allow it to pass unaltered into the conscious. During dreams, the preconscious is more lax in this duty than in waking hours, but is still attentive: as such, the unconscious must distort and warp the meaning of its information to make it through the censorship. As such, images in dreams are often not what they appear to be, according to Freud, and need deeper interpretation if they are to inform on the structures of the unconscious.

"I was very handsome and made the best impression on myself. We took a car (sharing the expenses). Ricchetti was terribly nervous, I was quite serene thanks to a small dose of cocaine, although his success was assured, and I had every reason to fear ridicule. (...) This is how I have performed (or rather how the cocaine has performed) and I am very satisfied." Freud, letter to Martha dated January 20, 1886. During the 1880s, the young Freud, who had not yet explored the labyrinths of the unconscious, tried to make a name for himself by publishing studies on erythroxylon coca, a plant from which an alkaloid, cocaine, was made and whose properties he praised. To these studies, which the French-speaking reader will find here in a new translation, we enclose some letters to Martha Bernays, his future wife, which shed light on Freud's intimacy with the drug.

The three essays in the book, "The Sexual Aberrations," "Infantile Sexuality," and "The Transformations of Puberty", are among Sigmund Freud's most important works as they set out a theory of human sexuality that continues to influence us today. Freud sought to link to his theory of the unconscious put forward inThe Interpretation of Dreams (1899) and his work on hysteria by positing sexuality as the driving force of both neuroses (through repression) and perversion. The three essays also included the concepts of penis envy, castration anxiety, and the Oedipus complex.