Freud and Philosophy: An Essay on Interpretation

by Paul Ricoeur and Denis Savage

This book originates in the Terry Lectures given at Yale University in the autumn of 1961.  According to the author, this book deals with Freud and not with psychoanalysis. Secondly, this book is one not of psychology but of philosophy.  the problem concerns here is the texture orstrure of Freudian discourse.  First, it is an epistemological problem: What is interpretation is psychoanalysis and how is the interpretation of the signs of man interrelated with the economic explanation that claims to get at the root of desire?  Second, it is a problem of reflective philosophy: What new self-undertstanding comes out of this interpretation of culture exclude all others? If not, what is the rule of thought by which it can be coordinated with other interpreations without falling into eclectism? Book II, the "Reading of Freud", conducted as rigorously as possible, has been kept separate from Book III, the "Philosophical Interpretation".  Thus the reader may treat the "Analytic" of Book II as a separate and self-sufficient work.