About psychoanalysis

Paul Ricoeur is considered one of the most significant philosophers of the 20th century. During his lifetime, he published more than thirty works—an extraordinary philosophical oeuvre that was profoundly influenced by Freud's psychoanalysis. Even as a student, Ricoeur came into contact with Freud's work and began to engage with it intensively from 1960 onwards. From this foundation, he developed a critical hermeneutics, viewing the "hermeneutics of suspicion"—for which he identified Nietzsche, Freud, and Marx as masters—as a necessary intermediary step towards a "hermeneutics of meaning." What kind of science is psychoanalysis? What truth does it proclaim, and how does it argue? What is its place in culture, and how has it transformed it? These and other questions occupy Ricoeur in the essays collected in this volume.