What is it that troubles and preoccupies us about the anxieties and anguishes of social and private life? Have advances in the disciplines of psychoanalysis, psychology or the social sciences in general ministered to our needs in these areas? Frank Cioffi's elegantly argued essays range over Wittgenstein's treatment of Frazer's anthropological accounts of human sacrifice and other ritual practices, and Freud's dealings with dreams, jokes and mental life in general. This volume will be of wide interest to readers in philosophy, psychology and aesthetics.