The New Lifetime Reading Plan

Psychoanalysis claims to be two things: a science (at least to its adherents) and a method. It is a theory of mental life and a spe- cific technique for the cure of neuroses. Both theory and tech- nique are based on a few fundamental concepts. They seem trite to us now, but they were not so a century ago. Among them are: the unconscious; the mechanism of repression; the formative power of infantile sexuality (Freud did not invent the Oedipus complex, he observed it); the dream life as the disguised expres- sion of fears and desires; and, more generally, the frightening power of the irrational in determining human behavior.

Sometimes with insufficient caution, Freud and his follow- ers applied their novel insights to fields seemingly remote from mental disease: religion, morality, war, history, death, humor, mythology, anthropology, philosophy, art, and literature. Particularly in literature Freud has had a pronounced influ­ence, not always for the good.

I must alert the reader of this new edition to the fact that if W.H. Auden were alive today his reverential lines, quoted above, might possibly be qualified. During the last two decades many scholars have submitted the Freudian doctrine to rigor- ous re-examination, and have questioned the validity and weight of his evidence. Furthermore, we know today far more

than Freud did about the brain's electrical behavior, knowl- edge that makes us question Freud's interpretation of the dream work. There is no doubt that on the intellectual stock exchange Freud has slipped several points since his death.

With respect to your choice of reading, two difficulties present themselves. The first is the vast volume of Freud's work. The sec­ond is the change and development of his thought, which means that an early (yet still valuable) book may be in part superseded by a later one. I list herewith eight titles. Experts will quarrel over ali of them, and doubtless champion others. The first five books, arranged chronologically, contain much of the general theory. The last three, similarly arranged, are more specialized or exem- plify Freud's thinking on a philosophical levei.

The Interpretation of Dreams The Psychopathology of Every day Life Three Essays on the Theory of Sexuality A History of the Psycho-Analytical Movement New Introductory Lectures on Psychoanalysis Beyond the Pleasure Principie The Ego and the Id Civilization and Its Discontents

I would suggest starting with these three titles: Three Essays on the Theory of Sexuality, The Interpretation of Dreams, and Civilization and Its Discontents.

C.F.

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GEORGE BERNARD SHAW

1856-1950

Selected Plays and Prefaces

For the better part of a century GBS explained and advertised himself and his intellectual wares with dazzling wit, energy, clar- ity, and persistence. A man who lived to be ninety-four; who probably began thinking in his cradle if not in the womb; who left behind him, in addition to a vast library of correspondence, thirty- three massive volumes of plays, prefaces, novйis, economic trea- tises, pamphlets, literary criticism, dramatic criticism, musical criticism, and miscellaneous journalism dealing with every major preoccupation of his time and many trivial ones; and who, like ali his favorite supermen, lived forward, as it were, toward an unguessable future—such a man reduces to no formula.

Except perhaps one, and it is his own: "The intellect^fis also a passion." Whether or not one agrees with Shaw at any point in his long mental wayfaring is less important than the solid fact that he made intellectual passion exciting, or at least mod- ish, for hundreds of thousands, perhaps millions, of human beings. He was a ferment, a catalyst, an enzyme. He left nei- ther system nor school. But one cannot come fresh to any half- dozen of his best plays and prefaces without having one's mind shaken, aerated, and often changed.

At the moment, the more rarefied critics tend to pass him by, or to stress his lacks: lack of any other than intellectual passion; lack of the tragic sense we find in the Greeks or in Shakespeare [39]; lack of what we call poetry. My own opinion is that he will be recognized as a master prose writer in the plain or unadorned style; and that, merely as a nonstop influential personality, he will rank with Voltaire[53], Tolstoy [88], and Doctor Johnson [59].

It will help us, as we read Shaw, to remember a few simple facts.