The Unconscious

Penguin Classics

By: Sigmund Freud, Graham Frankland, Mark Cousins

Narrated by: Michael Pennington

Length: 3 hrs and 52 mins

Publisher's summary

Brought to you by Penguin.

This Penguin Classic is performed by Michael Pennington, one of the founders of the English Shakespeare Company, known for his stage work with the RSC, and who played Carl Jung in the BBC drama, Freud. This definitive recording includes an introduction by Mark Cousins.

One of Freud's central achievements was to demonstrate how unacceptable thoughts and feelings are repressed into the unconscious, from where they continue to exert a decisive influence over our lives. This volume contains a key statement about evidence for the unconscious, and how it works, as well as major essays on all the fundamentals of mental functioning. Freud explores how we are torn between the pleasure principle and the reality principle, how we often find ways both to express and to deny what we most fear, and why certain men need fetishes for their sexual satisfaction. His study of our most basic drives, and how they are transformed, brilliantly illuminates the nature of sadism, masochism, exhibitionism and voyeurism.

©2005 Graham Frankland (P)2019 Penguin Audio

Interesting but extremely complex

This is certainly not light reading for the beach. Some kind of background or introduction to depth psychology is likely required. But it is of course classic Freud. Being partial to Jung myself, I take issue with Freud's insistence on hierarchy and structure in his formulations, particularly when dealing with something as unstructured - as Jung later showed - as the unconscious. For example, Freud's obsession with the pleasure principle in describing that psychological drive's components in terms of object, subject, and their determinate effect is far too presumptuous of linear structure for something as nebulous as the unconscious, which Freud himself admitted we know little of. But these are minor disagreements, and Freud was a pioneer. A crucial work for anyone interested in the subconscious or depth psychology in general.

Hard to Hear

This is not the only Penguin audiobook that seems to have a lower volume than most other titles on Audible. it is a great work in spite of the criticisms leveled at it in its own introduction. it's as good as anything offered by Ukemi...but it's just too hard to hear. And the narrator pronounces Freud "Foyt" most of the time. The experience is this: Mumble Mumble Mumble FOYT Mumble Mumble Mumble Mumble FOYT.

Easy classic

Great book but skip the introduction and preface.they are boring and add little to the work. This text provides a great overview on the unconscious, one of Freud’s best ideas.