In 1915, at the height of World War I, Sigmund Freud delivered a series of lectures at the University of Vienna that would reshape how humanity understood itself. This book is that lecture series, and it remains one of the most radical acts of intellectual exposure in modern thought. Freud argues that the conscious mind is merely a façade, that our dreams hold the key to our deepest desires, and that the slips of the tongue we dismiss as accidents are actually windows into the unconscious conflicts shaping our lives. He introduces the revolutionary idea that sexuality lurks beneath even the most innocent-seeming psychological phenomena, and that the path to treating neuroses lies not in medicine but in conversation, interpretation, and the careful analysis of what we cannot say about ourselves. This is Freud at his most defiant, defending psychoanalysis against a hostile medical establishment while laying out its entire architectural framework for the first time. A century later, whether you love him or hate him, no serious thinking about the mind can ignore him.
