Sigmund Freud, by Max Halberstadt (cropped)

''An Outline of Psychoanalysis'' is a work by

Sigmund Freud Sigmund Freud ( , ; born Sigismund Schlomo Freud; 6 May 1856 – 23 September 1939) was an Austrian neurologist and the founder of psychoanalysis, a clinical method for evaluating and treating psychopathology, pathologies explained as originatin ...

. Returning to an earlier project of providing an overview of

psychoanalysis PsychoanalysisFrom Greek: + . is a set of theories and therapeutic techniques"What is psychoanalysis? Of course, one is supposed to answer that it is many things — a theory, a research method, a therapy, a body of knowledge. In what might b ...

, Freud began writing this work in

Vienna en, Viennese , iso_code = AT-9 , registration_plate = W , postal_code_type = Postal code , postal_code = , timezone = CET , utc_offset = +1 , timezone_DST ...

in 1938 as he was waiting to leave for London. By September 1938, he had written three-quarters of the book, which were published together in 1940, a year after his death. James Strachey writes that while "the ''Outline'' must be described as unfinished ... it is difficult to regard it as incomplete," given its fairly comprehensive treatment of the subject matter.

Outline

In the work's preface, Freud argues that the purpose of the ''Outline'' is to "bring together the tenets of psycho-analysis and to state them, as it were, dogmatically—in the most concise form and in the most unequivocal terms." Composed of three sections, the works opens with a description of the

psychic apparatus The term psychic apparatus (also psychical apparatus, mental apparatus) denotes a central, theoretic construct of Freudian metapsychology, wherein an implicit intake and processing of information takes place, and thereby acts on said information ...

, including its spatial organization and differentiation into agencies. The ego, which develops through contact with the outside world, attempts to reconcile the needs of the id, the

superego The id, ego, and super-ego are a set of three concepts in psychoanalytic theory describing distinct, interacting agents in the psychic apparatus (defined in Sigmund Freud's structural model of the psyche). The three agents are theoretical const ...

, and reality. The id represents the hereditary past, whereas the superego represents tradition. Drives, which are basically conservative and located in the id, represent

somatic Somatic may refer to: * Somatic (biology), referring to the cells of the body in contrast to the germ line cells ** Somatic cell, a non-gametic cell in a multicellular organism * Somatic nervous system, the portion of the vertebrate nervous sys ...

needs for the psyche.

Eros In Greek mythology, Eros (, ; grc, Ἔρως, Érōs, Love, Desire) is the Greek god of love and sex. His Roman counterpart was Cupid ("desire").''Larousse Desk Reference Encyclopedia'', The Book People, Haydock, 1995, p. 215. In the earli ...

and the destruction, or death, impulse, whether antagonists or combined in biological functions, are the two fundamental impulses. In the work's second part, Freud discusses the “technique” of psychoanalysis. Freud then presents an example of how psychoanalysis can be used in practice. In the work's third part, Freud discusses the relationship between the

preconscious In psychoanalysis, preconscious is the loci preceding consciousness. Thoughts are preconscious when they are unconscious at a particular moment, but are not repressed. Therefore, preconscious thoughts are available for recall and easily 'capable ...

conscious Consciousness, at its simplest, is sentience and awareness of internal and external existence. However, the lack of definitions has led to millennia of analyses, explanations and debates by philosophers, theologians, linguisticians, and scien ...

, and

unconscious Unconscious may refer to: Physiology * Unconsciousness, the lack of consciousness or responsiveness to people and other environmental stimuli Psychology * Unconscious mind, the mind operating well outside the attention of the conscious mind a ...

and the external world. He then discusses the nature of the "internal world" of the mind.

References

Books by Sigmund Freud Unfinished books 1940 non-fiction books Books published posthumously {{psych-book-stub