A General Introduction to Psychoanalysis

The Interpretation of Dreams by Sigmund Freud is one of the most significant books of the 20th century. Though dreams and their role in human consciousness have been a continuing thread in religion and art and life down the centuries, Freud's look at the subject through the prism of his emerging practice and study of psychoanalysis provided a startlingly new and challenging perspective.

The Psychopathology of Everyday Life, which appeared first in 1901 and was then expanded in a series of subsequent editions, has proved to be one of Freud's most popular works, and one of his most influential during his lifetime. It was here that he proposed that many slips and errors of memory common to the average man in everyday life actually signals unconscious issues that beset the individual, and, if examined, can be extremely revealing.

In 1957, four years before his death, Carl Gustav Jung, psychiatrist and psychologist, began writing his life story. But what started as an exercise in autobiography soon morphed into an altogether more profound undertaking.

The Interpretation of Dreams is the book that Sigmund Freud considered his most important and that forever changed the way we think about our dreams. Here, Freud explained his discoveries about why we dream, what we dream, and what our dreams mean. In this groundbreaking book, Freud further demonstrated that it is in the treatment of abnormal mental states that dream analysis is the most valuable.

Modern Man in Search of a Soul is the classic introduction to the thought of Carl Jung. Along with Freud and Adler, Jung was one of the chief founders of modern psychiatry. In this book, Jung examines some of the most contested and crucial areas in the field of analytical psychology: dream analysis, the primitive unconscious, and the relationship between psychology and religion.

Irvin D. Yalom has made a career of investigating the lives of others. In Becoming Myself, his long-awaited memoir, he turns his therapeutic eye on himself, delving into the relationships that shaped him and the groundbreaking work that made him famous. The first-generation child of immigrant Russian Jews, Yalom grew up in a lower-class neighbourhood in Washington, DC. Determined to escape its confines, he set his sights on becoming a doctor. An incredible ascent followed.

This eloquent book translates attachment theory and research into an innovative framework that grounds adult psychotherapy in the facts of childhood development. Advancing a model of treatment as transformation through relationship, the author integrates attachment theory with neuroscience, trauma studies, relational psychotherapy, and the psychology of mindfulness.

The difficulty and cost of training psychotherapists properly is well known. It is far easier to provide a series of classes while ignoring the more challenging personal components of training. Despite the fact that the therapist's self-insight and emotional maturity are critical for successful psychotherapy, knowledge and technical skills are the focus of most training programs. As a result, the therapist's personal growth is either marginalized or ignored. The Making of a Therapist counters this trend by offering therapists a personal account of this important inner journey.

An updated revision of Jeffrey Kottler's classic book On Being a Therapist reveals the new realities and inner experiences of therapeutic practice today.

Sigmund Freud revolutionized the way in which we think about ourselves. From its beginnings as a theory of neurosis Freud developed psychoanalysis into a general psychology, which became widely accepted as the predominant mode of discussing personality and interpersonal relationships. Anthony Storr goes one step further and investigates the status of Freud's legacy today and the disputes that surround it.

Exposing the many lies told on and off the psychoanalyst's couch, Lying on the Couch gives listeners a tantalizing, almost illicit glimpse at what their therapists might really be thinking during their sessions. Fascinating, engrossing, and relentlessly intelligent, it ultimately moves listeners with a denouement of surprising humanity and redemptive faith.

Spanning hundreds of ideas developed over the past century, 50 Psychology Classics also explores important contemporary writings, such as Gladwell's Blink and Seligman's Authentic Happiness. Listeners will gain insight into the scientific research of leading contemporary psychologists, psychiatrists, and neurologists. And they'll discover why we think and act the way we do from the landmark best-sellers of psychology.

In six enthralling stories drawn from his own clinical experience, Irvin D. Yalom once again proves himself an intrepid explorer of the human psyche as he guides his patients - and himself - toward transformation. With eloquent detail and sharp-eyed observation, Yalom introduces us to a memorable cast of characters.

Josef Breuer, one of the founding fathers of psychoanalysis, is at the height of his career. Friedrich Nietzsche, Europe's greatest philosopher, is on the brink of suicidal despair, unable to find a cure for the headaches and other ailments that plague him. When he agrees to treat Nietzsche with his experimental "talking cure", Breuer never expects that he, too, will find solace in their sessions. Only through facing his own inner demons can the gifted healer begin to help his patient.

While C. G. Jung had a natural intuitive understanding of the transference and countertransference, his lack of a "coherent method and clinical technique for working with transference and his ambivalence and mercurial attitude to matters of method," have, in the words of therapist and Jungian scholar Jan Wiener, sometimes left Jungians who are eager to hone their knowledge and skills in this area "floundering and confused."