Freud on the Psychology of Ordinary Mental Life

Freud, although best known for his elucidation of the unusual in human mental life, also attempted to illuminate ordinary human experience, such as peopleOs appreciation of humor, their capacity to become engrossed in fiction, and their disposition to a variety of emotional experiences, including the uncanny, the stirrings prompted by beauty, and their disposition to mourn. His insights into the everyday and his sense of where within it the productive questions lie reveal an incisiveness that defies both earlier and subsequent thought on his topics. This book works to expose that vision and to demonstrate its fertility for further inquiry. It reconstructs several of FreudOs works on ordinary mental life, tracking his method of inquiry, in particular his search for the child within the adult, and culminating in a deployment of his tools independently of his analyses. It shows how to read Freud for his insight and generativity and how to push beyond the confines of his analyses in pursuit of new lines of exploration.

Susan Sugarman, professor of psychology at Princeton University, where she also teaches in the Council of the Humanities, is the author of empirical and theoretical works on the cognitive development of children. Attracted by Freud's investigative tactic of using the child to understand the adult, she has written more recently on Freud, including Freud on the Acropolis: Reflections on a Paradoxical Response to the Real.