This is a good collection to read while making your way through Freud’s collected works, if you’re interested in doing so. The book largely takes a chronological approach while focusing on specific themes: the unconscious, sexuality, “civilization,” and so on.

The contributors found in this collection are competent and rigorous: it’s clear that they aren’t academics simply trying on new ideas. Naturally, they have their own views, and can be a bit argumentative, but you can trust that they have a profound sense of the literature.

I was especially curious about the works that I would characterize as Freud’s “middle period”: Totem and Taboo, “Beyond the Pleasure Principle,” “The Ego and the Id,” and other such texts. I do believe that The Interpretation of Dreams and Civilization and Its Discontents are fundamental to making sense of Freud, but I find them nowhere near as interesting as that middle period.

One place where I learned a lot was in the coverage of Freud’s work on hysteria. Freud was a medical practitioner for a long period before he wrote The Interpretation of Dreams, but–according to my own selective knowledge–his work really begins with his writing on dreams. It isn’t at all true, and seeing coverage of Freud’s earlier work on hysteria was illuminating.

All said, this is a remarkably learned and informative collection of essays, and it’s a must-read for those looking to dive deeper into Freud.