The Psychology of Love

Freud's landmark writings on love and sexuality, including the famous case study of Dora newly translated and in one volume for the first time

This original collection brings together the most important writings on the psychology of love by one of the great thinkers of the twentieth century. Sigmund Freud's discussions of the ways in which sexuality is always psychosexuality that there is no sexuality without fantasy have changed social, cultural, and intellectual attitudes toward erotic life. Among the influential pieces included here are "On Female Sexuality," "The Taboo of Virginity," "A Child Is Being Beaten," and the widely cited case history of the eighteen-year-old Dora, making The Psychology of Love essential reading for anyone who wants to understand Freud's tremendous legacy.

For more than seventy years, Penguin has been the leading publisher of classic literature in the English-speaking world. With more than 1,700 titles, Penguin Classics represents a global bookshelf of the best works throughout history and across genres and disciplines. Readers trust the series to provide authoritative texts enhanced by introductions and notes by distinguished scholars and contemporary authors, as well as up-to-date translations by award-winning translators.

“Penguin should be congratulated on this innovative and timely project. (The Observer, London)”

Penguin should be congratulated on this innovative and timely project. (The Observer, London)

Sigmund Freud (1856-1939) was born in Moravia and lived in Vienna between the ages of four and eighty-two. In 1938 Hitler's invasion of Austria forced him to seek asylum in London, where he died the following year. Freud's career began with several years of brilliant work on the anatomy and physiology of the nervous system. He was almost thirty when, after a period of study under Charcot in Paris, his interests first turned to psychology, and another ten years of clinical work in Vienna (at first in collaboration with Breuer, an older colleague) saw the birth of his creation: psychoanalysis. This began simply as a method of treating neurotic patients by investigating their minds, but it quickly grew into an accumulation of knowledge about the workings of the mind in general, whether sick or healthy. Freud was thus able to demonstrate the normal development of the sexual instinct in childhood and, largely on the basis of an examination of dreams, arrived at his fundamental discovery of the unconscious forces that influence our everyday thoughts and actions. Freud's life was uneventful, but his ideas have shaped not only many specialist disciplines, but the whole intellectual climate of the last half-century.

Shaun Whiteside’s translations include Nietzsche’s The Birth of Tragedy and Musil’s The Confessions of Young Törless for Penguin Classics.

Jeri Johnson is a fellow in English at Exeter College, Oxford.

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