ABSTRACT
This chapter introduces psychoanalysis, whose influence during the last century is now easy to underestimate as a result of its waning prestige. It introduces psychoanalysis by discussing a work of its most influential exponent, Sigmund Freud's Introductory Lectures on Psychoanalysis (ILP). The chapter focuses on Sigmund Freud's classic, ILP, which is the transcript of lectures that he delivered in Vienna between 1916 and 1917. Freud's initial conjecture about the value of taking a third-personal approach to one's own behavior concerns what he calls parapraxes: slips of the tongue, misplacing objects, forgetting things, and other seemingly trivial, everyday errors. Freud views dreams, when properly understood, as windows into the unconscious. His account of dreams starts with the suggestion that the primary function of sleep is for bodily regeneration. The chapter illustrates the dangers here with reference to psychoanalytic account of dream symbolism, concluding that while psychoanalysis offers a fascinating theory of much human behavior, it is in need of experimental validation.
