This essay first appeared on The Imaginative Conservative.  Thanks to Winston Elliott at TIC for permission to re-post it here. The graphic is by Hillsdale artist Bryan Springer.

Freud Among the Great Books:
Beyond a Monolithic “Freudian Theory”[1]

I find myself for a moment in the interesting position of not knowing whether what I have to say should be regarded as something long known and self-evident or something completely new and strange.  I suspect, however, it is the latter.  (Sigmund Freud)[2]

When Sigmund Freud wrote these sentences in the late 1930’s, he was referring specifically to some findings on a more focused topic.  They may be taken, however, as an expression of a thought which apparently occurred to him often through the course of his career.  I also take them as expressing my own sense about the impressionistic report that I intend to provide in what…