Starting with the story of how he once forgot the name of an Italian painter - and how a young acquaintance mangled a quotation from Virgil through fears that his girlfriend might be pregnant - it brings together a treasure trove of muddled memories, inadvertent actions, and verbal tangles. Amusing, moving, and deeply revealing of the repressed, hypocritical Viennese society of his day, Freud's dazzling interpretations provide the perfect introduction to psychoanalytic thinking in action.
Paul Keegan (formerly editor of Penguin Classics and now poetry editor at Faber & Faber) provides a substantial introduction to this translation, by Anthea Bell, of Freud's seminal text (which is cited in Books for College Libraries, 3rd ed. Annotation (c) Book News, Inc., Portland, OR (booknews.com)
