Interesting. I had read some basic Freud in my Freshman days as an Undergraduate student. Recently, I became interested in rereading Freud or in trying some of his work that I had not previously been exposed to. I looked up his works on Wikipedia and picked the Psychopathology of Everyday Life as a likely read.
The introduction, by Peter Gay, is a wonderful, insightful biography of the life of Sigmund Freud, written from a much more realistic perspective than the watered down versions that I've read in the past. Hearing about his academic battles and jealousies was fascinating, as well as the ever-popular details of his (lack of) sex life.
The book is a series of vignettes in which Freud analyzes slips of the tongue and other everyday errors that through an interactive process with the subject, Freud is able to relate these errors to disturbing, traumatizing events. The entire process seems to be akin to playing Seven Degrees of Kevin Bacon. Freud's account of these conversations moves from Point A to Outer Space, stopping at Point 5, Star & G in between.
Very interesting insight into his character and pattern of thought.
