The 10 best psychoanalysis books

Psychoanalysis is a very curious current: the fascination that the theories and hypotheses on which it is based can cause is very great.. On the other hand, reading psychoanalysis books, especially with certain authors, may initially become a bit complicated for the person who is not used to navigating their waters.

Most of the books framed within the current of psychoanalysis require from the reader careful reading and slow digestion of its content. In other words, they are not books that are going to wake us up when we are sleepy.

Furthermore, on many occasions the reader has to go back over and over again to the same paragraph to find meaning or move forward in the hope of later finding a key that will allow you to solve the problem. This way, On many occasions, understanding is achieved by a kind of epiphany, which in psychology is called insight.

Now, there are certain works that deserve this effort. In this sense, no matter how many outlines, notes or summaries that we can find of a certain work, the original text will always have a charm that the texts that talk about it can never match. So, in this article We list and recommend those works that have had the most weight in the evolution of psychoanalysis.

Books from the beginning of Psychoanalysis

Studies on hysteria (1895)

It is a treatise written by Josef Breuer and Sigmund Freud. In it The treatment of five hysterical young women using an innovative therapeutic method is exposed. This method consisted of bringing forgotten traumatic memories to memory with the help of hypnosis.

Included is the famous case of Anna O., who was Breuer’s patient and the first to be treated by the cathartic method, precursor of the fundamental psychoanalytic technique called: free association (created by Freud). It becomes one of the emblematic cases of the beginnings of psychoanalysis.

This book presents two different points of view on the causes of hysteria: a neurophysiological cause and a psychological cause.. The first proposed by Breuer and the second by Freud. At the time, the reception of the book was not exactly good by the European doctors of that time, since it broke with the paradigms of the time.

The Interpretation of Dreams (1900)

The Interpretation of Dreams is one of Sigmund Freud’s best-known works. With this publication he begins his theory of dream analysis, understanding these as the “hallucinatory” wish fulfillment and therefore:

In this work you can find the method of dream analysis through the free association of the most important symbols of each dream. There is also a systematic exposition of the psychic apparatus that would be the first Freudian topic.

The curious thing about this work is that in its first publications it was not so successful, it was only after a re-edition and addition by Freud on universal symbolisms did it begin to gain notoriety. On the other hand, this addition generated controversy and criticism from other psychoanalysts because they considered dreams as elements of analysis loaded with subjectivity, and therefore not generalizable.

Most of this work is based on the analysis of the author’s own dreams -Freud-, from which he will put together his own theory. As a tool to do so, the free associationapplying it to the most relevant symbols that appear in the dream representation.

Three essays on sexual theory (1905)

This work, along with “The Interpretation of Dreams”, is one of Freud’s most transcendental contributions. In this book, Freud advances his theory of human sexuality and especially childhood. It is where you can find his famous and controversial statement: “The child can become a polymorphous pervert.”

With it, Freud wants to express that perversion is present even in healthy people, and that the path towards a mature and normal sexual attitude does not begin in puberty but in childhood. It captures the psychosexual development of human beings and includes the concepts of penisneid (penis envy), the castration complex and the Oedipus complex. Becoming, therefore, a fundamental book to understand the evolution of psychoanalysis.

Humanistic psychoanalysis books

There are several authors of books on humanistic psychoanalysis. However, the concept as such was developed by Erich Fromm. Being a product of his Freudian psychoanalytic training, to which he incorporated ideas that he took from Buddhism and Marxism. Below we talk about his two most important works.

Fear of Freedom (1941)

This book attempts to explain the aspects of the contemporary crisis, especially marked in Western civilization, related to the freedom of man. Fromm refers to two phenomena – fascism, as a political expression, and the growing standardization of individuals in advanced societies as a sociocultural expression – to explain the different manifestations of the crisis.

It suggests how both manifestations of the crisis are nothing more than collective ways of evading reality. Provoking great consequences in man in modern industrial society: a self-awareness of personal insignificance, a feeling of moral loneliness and resignation to sacrificing his own life by virtue of external and superior powers.

The art of loving (1957)

Another work by Erich Fromm that you should not stop reading. Although it is a book of psychoanalysis, its reading could be classified as less dense or a little more enjoyable, while still being a profound analysis of human nature and the theoretical principles that he had already begun to develop in his book Fear of Freedom. .¨

In this book, Fromm states that love It can be the product of a theoretical study, since it elevates it to the category of art. Which has its theory and practice that must be mastered. Thus, one of the most important postulates of this book is that love is the answer to the problem of human existence, since The development of this leads to a dissolution of the state of separation or separateness without losing one’s own individuality.

He takes a tour of the study of the different kinds of love: brotherly love, father’s and mother’s love, self-love, erotic love and love of God. Developing the idea that the necessary elements for the development of mature love are care, responsibility, respect and knowledge.

Lacanian psychoanalysis book

Jacques Lacan, a French Freudian psychoanalyst, is characterized by having a theoretical development that continues Freud’s work, but which is initially quite intricate to understand. He is an author who is difficult to understand at first glance; what he writes may even seem disconcerting or meaningless. The logic of his approach is usually discovered when the reader lets the text mature in his head, and after a while returns to his text. In any case, if we read it very carefully, we will discover surprising ideas.

Seminar 3: The Psychoses (1955-1956)

It’s a very interesting book: In its pages, Lacan makes a complete theoretical development regarding psychoses. It proposes quite revolutionary and innovative approaches. In this sense he gives a different vision of what this structure represents, from the bases of its emergence to the way it is approached.

He makes a study of the book “Memoirs of a Nervous Patient,” autobiography of Daniel Paul Schereber, who was president of the German appeals court and developed paranoid schizophrenia. Work to which Freud paid a lot of attention and on which Lacan later developed a whole, frankly interesting, theoretical understanding of the case.

The Children’s Cause (1986)

It is a book by the French psychoanalyst Françoise Dolto. Although it is a book on psychoanalysis, it is also quite enjoyable to read and has incredible realism, a very characteristic quality of this author. It is a book that breaks with what is usually said about the child’s universe, reversing the order since it observes the world from the child’s point of view and in his sole interest.

Thus, Françoise Dolto not only leads us to listen to children, to fully understand them through their own language, but also to speak to them with ours without having to impose it on them. It is a courageous and lucid contribution that will not disappoint those who already know Dolto and will not leave indifferent those who are discovering her now.

Desire upon Desire (2006)

It is a book by Fernando Colina, a contemporary psychoanalytic psychiatrist. It is a book in which “desire” is conceived as a curved flow that runs between pleasure, illusions and morality. He lets himself be loved throughout the book to show the dialectical games he establishes between equality and difference, life and death, drive and pleasure.

It is a book that leaves a lot of substance if we read it calmly. This is because their approaches are rich in content and creating an adequate outline of them requires time.

About Madness (2013)

It is another book by Fernando Colina, who proposes a vision, understanding (or not) and approach to what is called “madness.” He makes an important criticism regarding the position of the specialist regarding psychoses and his theoretical rigor that can dehumanize the person in front of him. It is a critical and entertaining book.

It captures the difficult relationship of the interpretant -analyst- with theorization, with the right distance, with medicines or with the fundamental “right to be crazy.” He touches on several topics that have to do with madness such as: power, diagnosis, tenderness or violence. It is a controversial text because it opposes the traditional position of psychiatry.

Dictionary of psychoanalysis by Lapanche and Pontalis (1967)

It is a book of psychoanalysis that It helps to understand the terminology of this current. Extremely useful for those who are starting out in this reading. It contains fairly clear and comparative explanations between authors, so it is very interesting to have it on hand if you want to understand basic issues of this current before delving into it.

Thus, each concept found in it has its definition and its pertinent comment, with clarity predominating in the exposition. At the beginning of each article, the equivalents of the term in German, French, English, Italian and Portuguese are indicated.

It is, therefore, a very useful work tool. We would even say that it is essential to follow the development of psychoanalysis and to bring its most important terms and concepts closer to the novice reader. It is not a simple classification of concepts alphabetically, but there is a complete structure of references and referrals between articles that allows the reader to establish significant relationships between concepts and orient themselves in the…