FREUD: A READING LIST

To begin, you should read Freud. There is no substitute, and no excuse. He writes very well and readably,
and the major texts have all been conveniently collected in Penguin. I used to think that the place to start
was The Interpretation of Dreams, his first important book and according to some his masterpiece. I now
think maybe it's better to begin with the Introductory and New Introductory Lectures, and then go straight
in to the amazing Case Studies; then follow where your interest takes you.
This list begins with a selection of what should (the vagaries of publishers' lists permitting) be in print in
paperback form. It is followed by a select list of what's available in the Library. There are about
300 entire books on Freud in the Library, and another 300 or so articles published in the last ten years. I
have not read all of these, and neither should you. Browse around, see what takes your fancy, see what
you can find. My list is a select list of what looks interesting, to give you a start. But: three words of
warning. One: all of the modern stuff on Freud now is about French Freud, Lacan and so on. I've tried to
cut out most of the obviously Lacanian material from the following list, but there will still be some in
there. See what you can find. Two: the two Anti-Freud books are quite devastating, in very different
ways. If you read them, it's very hard to go on being sympathetic... Three: READ FREUD FIRST!
1. THE PENGUIN FREUD LIBRARY

This contains the following works: Introductory Lectures on Psychoanalysis (1916-17), New Introductory
Lectures on Psychoanalysis (1933), The Interpretation of Dreams (1900), The Psychopathology of
Everyday Life (1901: on the 'Freudian slip),On Sexuality (including the important Three Essays on the
Theory of Sexuality), Case Histories 1 ('Dora' and 'Little Hans'), Case Histories 2 (including 'The Rat
Man' and 'The Wolf Man'), Civilisation, Society, and Religion (the late and pessimistic Freud:
including The Future of an Illusion [1927: about religion] and Civilisation and its Discontents[1930]), Art
and Literature (including essays on Dostoievsky, Goethe, Ibsen, Leonardo, Michelangelo, and
Shakespeare), 6.95.
2. GUIDELINES

Rycroft, C., A Critical Dictionary of Psychoanalysis, (Penguin, 1972). A very useful bluffer's guide to the
subject--and not just that: very clear and helpful, in spite of the bizarre cover illustration.
Elizabeth Wright, Psychoanalytic Criticism: Theory in Practice
(Methuen, New Accents, 1984). This book, which looks exactly like an introduction to psychoanalytic
criticism for beginners, isn't. Do not leap upon it with glad cries of joy: it's very difficult, and mostly not
about classic Freud (this gets only one chapter) but about the new and extremely difficult French Freud of
Lacan. However, it does have very good reading lists . . .
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3. LIGHT READING

Janet Malcolm, Psychoanalysis: the Impossible Profession (Picador, 1980). This is an extraordinary
account of what actually goes on in Freudian analysis in America: highly readable, and mind-boggling.
Janet Malcolm, In the Freud Archives (Flamingo, 1984). More amazing revelations about the
extraordinary in-fighting and spitefulness of the American Freudian hierarchy. Would you buy a used
theory of mind from these people? one wonders.
4. THE CASE AGAINST

H.J.Eysenck, The Decline and Fall of the Freudian Empire (Penguin, 1985). Though he writes sometimes
like the thinking person's football hooligan, and though he recounts quite cheerfully psychological
experiments of blood-curdling inhumanity (artificially inducing neurosis in a child or the memory of rape
in a woman, if you can believe this) the attack on Freud is devastating, particularly in the (very extensive)
summaries of the work of other people. If you want to read about how Freud (a) fabricated his data (b)
dreamed up his theories as the consequence of cocaine addiction (c) slept with his wife's sister, this book
is for you. On the other hand, if you don't want to have your faith in Freud shattered, don't read it, and
also don't read
Ernest Gellner, The Psychoanalytic Movement (Grafton, 1985). This is a serious book: with a certain
righteous anger, Gellner tears the whole Freudian edifice to pieces, and then goes into the actually very
interesting question of why so many people believed it in the first place. To this he supplies the
beginnings of an answer.
5. BOOKS AND ARTICLES IN THE LIBARY
By Freud (Selected)
Sigmund Freud, Introductory Lectures on Psycho-analysis, a Course of Twenty-eight Lectures Delivered
at the University of Vienna, (London: Allen & Unwin, 1929) Main Library 2 BF 175
Sigmund Freud, New Introductory Lectures on Psycho-analysis, (London, Hogarth Press: Institute of
Psycho-Analysis, 1933) Main Library 2 s BF 175
Sigmund Freud, Collected Papers, Vol.3, Case histories, (London: Hogarth Press and the Institute of
Psycho-Analysis, 1925) Main Library 1 s BF 175
Sigmund Freud, The Future of an Illusion, (London, Hogarth Press: Institute of Psycho-Analysis, 1928)
Main Library 1 s BF 175
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Sigmund Freud, The Interpretation of Dreams, Ed. J. Strachey. (London: Allen & Unwin, 1954) Main
Library 1 s BF 1078
Sigmund Freud, The Psychopathology of Everyday Life, (London: Benn, 1966) Main Library 1 s BF 175

About Freud

Freud, a Collection of Critical Essays, Ed. Perry Meisel. Twentieth century views A Spectrum book.
(Englewood Cliffs, London: Prentice-Hall, 1981) Main Library 1 s BF 175
Bruno Bettelheim, Freud and Man's Soul, (London,: Chatto & Windus, 1982) Main Library 1 s BF 175
Frank Cioffi, Freud, Ed. Frank Cioffi. Modern judgements. (London: Macmillan, 1973) Main Library 1 s
BF 175
Edmund Engelman, Berggasse 19, Sigmund Freud's Home and Offices, Vienna, 1938 , the Photographs
of Edmund Engelman, (New York: Basic Books, 1976) Main Library 1 s q BF 175
Reuben Fine, A History of Psychoanalysis, (New York, Guildford: Columbia University Press, 1979)
Main Library 1 s BF 173
Steven Marcus, Freud and the Culture of Psychoanalysis, Studies in the Transition From Victorian
Humanism to Modernity, (Boston (Mass.), London: Allen & Unwin, 1984) Main Library 1 s BF 175
Jean Baker Miller, Psychoanalysis and Women, Ed. Jean Baker Miller. Pelican books. (Harmondsworth
(etc.): Penguin, 1974) Main Library 1 HQ 1206
David Stafford-Clark, What Freud Really Said, (London: Macdonald, 1965) Main Library 1 s BF 175,
Barnes Medical Lib. 1 RC 343
Arnold I. Davidson, "How To Do the History of Psychoanalysis: A Reading of Freud's Three Essays on
the Theory of Sexuality," Critical Inquiry 13(2) (1987): 252-277. s per PN 1.C69
Francoise Meltzer, "The Trial(s) of Psychoanalysis," Critical Inquiry 13(2) (1987): s per PN 1.C69

Freud and literature

Representing Shakespeare, new Psychoanalytic Essays, Ed. Murray M. Schwartz and Coppelia Kahn.
(Baltimore, London: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1980) Main Library 1 PR 2976
Jeffrey Berman, The Talking Cure, Literary Representations of Psychoanalysis, (New York, London:
New York University Press, 1985) Main Library 1 s PS 228.P7
Clive Bloom, Reading Poe, Reading Freud, the Romantic Imagination in Crisis, (Basingstoke:
Macmillan, 1988) Main Library 2 PS 2632.P7
Ruth B. Bottigheimer, Grimms' bad Girls & Bold Boys, the Moral & Social Vision of the Tales, (New
Haven, London: Yale University Press, 1987, 1987) Main Library 1 PT 2281.G3
Maryanne M Garbowsky, The House Without the Door, a Study of Emily Dickinson and the Illness of
Agoraphobia, (Rutherford (N.J.), London: Fairleigh Dickinson University Press, Associated University
Presses, 1988) Main Library 1 PS 1541
Andre Green, The Tragic Effect, the Oedipus Complex in Tragedy, (Cambridge, New York: Cambridge
University Press, 1979) Main Library 2 PN 1899.O3
David Lynch, Yeats, the Poetics of the Self, (Chicago, London: University of Chicago Press, 1979) Main
Library 1 PR 5907
Terry Eagleton, "Psychoanalysis, the Kabbala and the Seventeenth Century;" Proc. of the Essex Conf. on
the Sociology of Lit., July 1980, Ed. Francis Barker, Jay Bernstein, John Coombes, Peter Hulme, Jennifer
Stone and Jon Stratton. 1642: Literature and Power in the Seventeenth Century. (Colchester: Dept. of
Lit., Univ. of Essex, 1981) 201-206. PN 51
Leonard F. Manheim, "Dickens and Psychoanalysis: A Memoir," Dickens Studies Annual: Essays on
Victorian Fiction 11 (1983): 335-345. s per PR 4579.D52
J. P. Shute, "Nabokov and Freud: The Play of Power," Modern Fiction Studies 30(4) (1984): 637-650. s
per PN 3311.M6
Joseph C. Sitterson Jr., "Oedipus in the Stolen Boat: Psychoanalysis and Subjectivity in The
Prelude," Studies in Philology 86(1) (1989): 96-115. s per PB 1.S8
Valerie Traub, "Prince Hal's Falstaff: Positioning Psychoanalysis and the Female Reproductive
Body," Shakespeare Quarterly 40(4) (1989): 456-474. s per PR 2885.S4
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Rowland Wymer, "Freud, Jung and the 'Myth' of Psychoanalysis in The White Hotel," Mosaic: A Journal
for the Interdisciplinary Study of Literature 22(1) (1989): 55-69. s per PN 2.M6
David J. Gordon, "D. H. Lawrence's Dual Myth of Origin," Sewanee Review 89(1) (1981): 83-94. s per
AS 36.U6S4

Freud and literary theory

Literature and Psychoanalysis, Ed. Edith Kurzweil and William Phillips. (New York, Guildford:
Columbia University Press, 1983, 1983) Main Library 1 PN 56.P6
Frederick C. Crews, Out of my System, Psychoanalysis, Ideology, and Critical Method, (New York:
Oxford University Press, 1975) Main Library 1 PN 56.P6
David Aberbach, Surviving Trauma: Loss, Literature and Psychoanalysis, (New Haven, London: Yale
University Press, 1989) Main Library 1 PN 56.P6
Robert Con Davis and Ronald Schleifer, Contemporary Literary Criticism, Literary and Cultural
Studies, (New York, London: Longman, 1989) Main Library 1 PN 94
Daniel Gunn, Psychoanalysis and Fiction, an Exploration of Literary and Psychoanalytic
Borders, (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1988) Main Library 1 PN 56.P92
English Institute, Psychoanalysis and the Question of the Text (Baltimore, London: Johns Hopkins
University Press, 1978) Main Library 1 PN 98.P9
Ann Jefferson and David Robey, Modern Literary Theory, a Comparative Introduction, (London:
Batsford, 1986) Main Library 2 PN 45
Sarah Kofman, The Childhood of Art, an Interpretation of Freud's Aesthetics, European
perspectives. (New York: Columbia University Press, 1988) Main Library 1 BF 175
Edith Kurzweil and William Phillips, Literature and Psychoanalysis, (New York, Guildford: Columbia
University Press, 1983) Main Library 1 PN 56.P6
Jack J Spector, The Aesthetics of Freud, a Study in Psychoanalysis and art, (London: Allen Lane, 1972)
Main Library 1 s BH 201
Marshall W. Alcorn Jr. and Mark Bracher, "Literature, Psychoanalysis, and the Re-Formation of the Self:
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A New Direction for Reader-Response Theory," PMLA: Publications of the Modern Language
Association of America 100 (1985): 342-354. s per PB 1.P9
Jerry Aline Flieger, "Entertaining the Menage a Trois: Psychoanalysis, Feminism, and Literature," in Ed.
Richard Feldstein and Judith Roof. Feminism and Psychoanalysis. (Ithaca: Cornell UP, 1989) 185-208.
HQ 1206
Gary Saul Morson, "Literary Theory, Psychoanalysis, and the Creative Process," Poetics Today 3(2)
(1982): 157-172. s per PN 2.P7
Karen Newman, "Writing the 'Talking Cure': Psychoanalysis and Literature," Poetics Today 3(2) (1982):
173-182. s per PN 2.P7
Ellen Peel, "Psychoanalysis and the Uncanny in Literature," Comparative Literature Studies 17(4) (1980):
410-417. s per PN 2.C62
Wright, Elizabeth, Psychoanalytic Criticism, Theory in Practice , New accents. (London: Methuen, 1984)
Main Library 1 PN 98.P9

Anti Freud

H. J. Eysenck, Decline and Fall of the Freudian Empire, (Harmondsworth: Viking, 1985) Main Library 1
s BF 175 Barnes Medical Lib. 1 BF 173.F85
Ernest Gellner, The Psychoanalytic Movement, or, the Cunning of Unreason, Paladin movements and
ideas. (London: Paladin/Grafton, 1985) Main Library 2 BF 173