ABSTRACT

In 1896, Freud planned to devote the next several years to major scientific works on the psychology and psychotherapy of the neuroses, but the study of dreams and his self-analysis led him elsewhere: along the “royal road to a knowledge of the unconscious activities of the mind” and then to the grander realms of philosophy, cultural analysis, and cultural change to which he had always aspired. The four foundational texts that Freud wrote between 1899 and 1905—The Interpretation of Dreams, The Psychopathology of Everyday Life, Jokes and Their Relation to the Unconscious, and Three Essays on the Theory of Sexuality—were not focused on neuro-pathological interests, as he claimed, but on “the core of our being,” i.e., our human nature, and how an understanding of that nature illuminates our inner lives and the work of culture, along with the failings of contemporary morality. It was this aspect of his work—as cultural analysis and cultural criticism—and not its potential as a form of medical treatment, that drew Freud’s first followers to him, including Adler, Rank, Jones, and Jung.