Freud and Philosophy. An Essay on Interpretation. The Terry Lectures. Translated by Denis Savage

Ricoeur's book is specifically about the nature of freudian interpretation.It restricts itself to Freud's texts alone and does not draw on the enormous amount of secondary literature on Freud and psychoanalysis.Ricoeur locates Freud with Marx and Nietzsche as one of the great unmaskers of cultural and psychological disguises. He sees him also as one of the great interpreters of symbols,it is the symbols which Freud unmasks as being the manner in which the unconscious manifests itself,in disguise,to the conscious mind.Thus for Freud symbols do not,so to speak,point beyond themselves but rather below.Usually,as most of us know,to sexual drives.Ricoeur patiently unfolds the vast Freudian corpus,and finds a central place for the interpretation of dreams,which he sees Freud using as a model for all further interpretations;from jokes to religious phenomena.The book is divided into two large parts;the first,the analytic,is interpretive;the second,the dialectic,is critical.Ricoeur's own work is concerned with both interpretation and symbolism,so it is natural that he should devote so much time to Freud.The difference however is that for Ricoeur symbols really do point beyond,(see his 'The Symbolism Of Evil').For someone like me who,though sympathetic to Freud,finds his almost dogmatic atheistic stance somewhat troubling,Ricoeurs book is helpful to stop one from throwing the baby out with the bathwater so to speak.A worthwhile study but by no means easy.