An Outline of Psychoanalysis

An Outline of Psychoanalysis is a work by Sigmund Freud. Returning to an earlier project of providing an overview of psychoanalysis, Freud began writing this work in Vienna in 1938 as he was waiting to leave for London. By September 1938 he had written three-quarters of the book, which was published in 1940, a year after his death. Composed of three sections, the "Outline" opens with a description of the psychic apparatus, including its spatial organization and differentiation into agencies. The ego, which develops through contact with the outside world, attempts to reconcile the needs of the id, the superego, and reality. The id represents the hereditary past, the superego, tradition. Drives, which are basically conservative and located in the id, represent somatic needs for the psyche. Eros and the destruction, or death, impulse, whether antagonists or combined in biological functions, are the two fundamental impulses.