Archive of Ulrike Kistner
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Freud's Missing Object: The 1905 Edition of Three Essays on the Theory of Sexuality
Ulrike Kistner's new translation of the first, 1905 edition of Freud's Three Essays on the Theory of Sexuality is out this week. To celebrate its publication, all books on our psychoanalysis bookshelf are 40% off until Sunday, January 29 at midnight UTC.
In the essay below, the book's foreword, Kistner and scholars Philippe Van Haute and Herman Westerink (who also contributed an introductory essay to the new edition) outline the theoretical implications of the non-Oedipal psychoanalysis Freud pursued in this first version of the Essays — revised away in subsequent editions — and explain the necessity of a new standalone volume.
Sigmund Freud published the first version of Three Essays on the Theory of Sexuality in 1905, the same year in which he published Fragment of an Analysis of Hysteria (“Dora”) and Jokes and Their Relation to the Unconscious. These three books, together with others written in that period, can only be properly understood through the intrinsic reference that binds them to one another. These three books illuminate each other and Freud’s thinking in that period.