Book of the It

First published in 1923, the Book of It is a key text in the history of psychoanalytical thought and the investigation of human sexual compulsion. Configured as a series of letters, the book posits the It' as the unconscious force which drives human behaviour. It was this notion which Freud would modify into the concept of the Id. Groddeck was an early advocate of self-healing. He defines a zone of blood, excrement, mutilation and nightmare and through this darkly atavistic lens grounded to the sexual pulse of decay, he reveals the most hidden recesses of the human psyche.'