This book sets out to clarify five key Freudian concepts (the pleasure
principle, the primary processes, the unconscious, transference, and the
reality principle) elaborated early on in Freud's work but, it is
argued, rarely understood--even by psychoanalysts themselves. It
examines in turn the post-Freudian paradigms employed in
neuropsychoanalysis, Lacan, Zizek, object relations, and psychoanalytic
approaches to identity politics, and in doing so reveals the extent to
which they have been distorted and repressed in these new contexts. Over
the course of the book the author demonstrates how Freud's unpublished
Project for a Scientific Psychology can be seen as a complete system of
core concepts that both ground psychoanalysis in neurology and also
introduce a vital challenge to the brain sciences. This book will appeal
to students and scholars of psychoanalysis, clinical psychology, and
psychoanalytic theory.