Introduction

These lectures were delivered in 1972 and 1973 to the students and guests of the Child Psychotherapy Course at the Tavistock Clinic, London. The students were largely in the first preclinical year of the course, so that the lectures served as background for acquaintance with Freud's work from reading seminars in this and in the following year. The aim of the lectures was to prepare the students for systematic study of the work of Melanie Klein by giving a firm foundation in Freud's writing on method, data and clinical formulation, somewhat at the expense of any systematic concern with his theory of the mind. Its emphasis was therefore heavily weighted on the clinical papers and on those aspects of his thought which can be seen to have had a development in Mrs Klein's work, It was also the intention to lecture in a critical way, searching out the order, meaning and significance of Freud's work rather than in any way to summarize it

For this reason it is essential to the understanding of these lectures that the reader, like the student, should at least have refreshed his knowledge of the papers and books discussed, particularly the following ?required? reading: