Susan Sugarman, Professor of Psychology at Princeton University, New Jersey, came to the study of Freud as a developmental psychologist who found in Freud's works a striking theory of how the mind develops and a singularly incisive method of argument. She transitioned from studying children to trying to understand the adult mind by looking for the child within it. A former Fulbright scholar and Guggenheim fellow, she is the author of four other books, including Piaget's construction of the child's reality and Freud on the psychology of ordinary mental life.

• Introduction; 1. Freud on psychoanalysis: 'Five Lectures on Psychoanalysis' (1909a); 2. The pleasure and reality principles: 'Formulations Regarding Two Principles in Mental Functioning' (1911); 'The Psychology of the Dream-Processes' from The Interpretation of Dreams (1900); 3. Ambivalence and the origin of the civilized mind: 'Taboo and Emotional Ambivalence' from Totem and Taboo (1913b); 4. Narcissism as stage in development: 'On Narcissism: An Introduction' (1914); 5. The impetus to the mind: 'Instincts and Their Vicissitudes' (1915a); 6. The possibility of repression: 'Repression' (1915b); 'Negation' (1925a); 7. The unconscious and the structure of the mind: 'The Unconscious' (1915c); 8. Beyond the pleasure principle: 'Beyond the Pleasure Principle' (1920); 9. A new architecture of the mind: 'The Ego and the Id' (1923); 10. Pleasure revised: 'An Economic Problem in Masochism' (1924); 11. Civilization, morality, and the pursuit of pleasure: 'Civilization and its Discontents' (1930); Epilogue: what Freud really meant.

'Here is the trajectory of Sigmund Freud's thought from early to late, and at the same time a delineation of its systematic structure; the story goes smoothly, widening like a river - an illuminating, eminently followable guide to one of the boldest investigations ever of how the human mind works.' Rüdiger Bittner, Universität Bielefeld, Germany