How to Read Freud (How to Read)

"Freud and his cannon of work have undoubtedly been diminished by the passage of time, often reduced to a crude characterization as a result of misrepresentation in the popular media; the ideas have become clichéd and passé. This is a theme, which Cohen locates early on, in his introduction to the ideas and work of Freud. Freud has become, as he puts it, "just another motif in our cultural wallpaper (p.1)." And so on approaching 'How to read Freud' I wanted to be able to answer a number of questions. What is the 21st century legacy to the ideas, which once directed the gaze of Western liberal civilisation upon itself? Secondly how do we start to understand Freud as being something more than a redundant novelty? Thirdly what indeed did Freud have to say, and how did he say it?



As a student mental health nurse in the 1980's I was interested enough in my tutor's diagrammatic representation of the Freudian structure of the mind, prompted by a desire to grasp something of the gist of Freudian thought, to at least pay attention to the spherical mind-map emerging on the classroom flipchart. Like so many mysterious locations, the domains of conscious, sub-conscious and unconscious and strangely named components (ego, superego, id) took upon themselves a tangible and fascinating reality. Furthermore I was also interested enough to read the snippets about Freud in the standard mental heath nursing texts of the time. My appreciation of Freud's work, however, remained rather thin. I like many others before and since, never approached his work directly, nor even through any of the available expert commentaries.



So it was (very!) belatedly, that I was interested in the publishers claims about this book, that I might be able to at least approach an understanding of Freud's work through reading 10 or so excerpts, and Josh Cohen's discussion and commentary upon those extracts. The intention of this method is to clarify and trace the development of the ideas and to provide a masterclass, thereby allowing entry into further study of Freudian thought.



Cohen presents the case for Freud's unmasking of the unconscious identity through jokes, slips of the tongue, and the neuroses. He also reveals something of the analytic method of the therapist, whose role is to facilitate entry into the unconscious and thereby to access and release the nucleus of any psychological trauma, by probing gently into negations, allusions, transferences and dreams.



Taken at a gentle pace of a chapter a day, 'How to read Freud' proved to be thought provoking and manageable. En-route of course you get the piquant fun of turning the mechanisms of denial, compulsion and repression upon oneself, in an attempt to identify the hidden 'me,' but I'm sure that's all part of the fascination of delving into Freud.



So, does it succeed? It's a very short book, 124 pages in the main body of the text. So it's still a very ambitious project to present Freud so concisely. It is well written, the scholarship mixed with wit and a sense of contemporary relevance, although the first and final chapters for me eclipsed all others. 'How to read Freud' enabled me to access Freud more directly than hitherto and to start to conceptualise something of the main tenets of his thinking.



I would have liked a little more appraisal (say another chapter) of the status of Freud's work within today's intellectual community, a detail which I am sure Cohen is more than capable of presenting, based on the depth and clarity of the work presented in this book. Whether such an extension to the stated purpose of the series i.e. to enable the reader to access the work, is warranted, is something, which the publishers might want to take a view on for any future edition.



Of course what this book cannot do is to proselytise on behalf of the school of psychoanalysis. Freud's ideas seem compelling at times, although the supporting logic can also seem circuitous and tautological. I remain both partly convinced but ever so slightly sceptical. If I refer back to the three questions I set out at the beginning of this review, I feel as though the questions about how to understand Freud as something more than a redundant novelty and what did Freud have to say, and how did he say it, have been satisfactorily answered. The first question about Freud's legacy remains, but may be beyond the scope of such a slim volume."
~ Written on 2005-03-10