Despite distorted understandings of Freud's views and despite periodic waves of Freud-bashing, Auden's assessment remains essentially correct. Freud's influence continues to be enormous and pervasive. He gave us a new and powerful way to think about and investigate human thought, action, and interaction. He made sense of ranges of experience generally neglected or misunderstood. And while one might wish to reject or argue with some of Freud's particular interpretations and theories, his writings and his insights are too compelling to simply turn away. There is still much to be learned from Freud.

The essays here collected focus on some of Freud's masterworks and some of his central concepts, trying to bring out the structure of his arguments and contributions to our self-understanding.

Freud was born in 1856 in Freiberg in Moravia, but after his family's move when he was four years old, he passed almost all of his long life in Vienna. The story of his life is the story of his thought. The great events were most often the occasions of his discoveries and speculations. After his childhood move, the rest of his life can be viewed as a tale of four cities, the psychogeography of which is explored by Carl Schorske. Vienna, embroiled in anti-Semitism, was the ambivalent scene of Freud's professional advances and defeats as well as home to his contented family life.