The Psychoanalytic Theory of Neurosis

A perennially best-selling and influential psychoanalytic work.

When Otto Fenichel died suddenly at age 48, Anna Freud mourned the loss of “his inexhaustible knowledge of psychoanalysis and his inimitable way of organising and presenting his facts.” These qualities shine in his classic text, which has been a beacon to generations of psychoanalysts. Investigating the relationship between biological needs and external influences―the tensions and inhibitions that nurture neuroses―Fenichel concludes that “neuroses are social diseases,” arising from the demands of civilisation on the developing organism.