author
Wilfrid Lay
b. 1872
A psychologist and popular writer who helped introduce psychoanalysis to general readers in the early 20th century. His books explore the hidden motives behind love, education, belief, and everyday behavior in clear, accessible language.
1 Audiobook
A Plea for Monogamy
by Wilfrid Lay
About the author
Born in 1872, Wilfrid Lay was an American writer and psychologist whose work brought psychoanalytic ideas to a wide audience. Early in his career he wrote Mental Imagery, Experimentally and Subjectively Considered (1898), and he later became best known for books that explained inner life in practical, readable terms.
His major works include Man's Unconscious Conflict (1917), The Child's Unconscious Mind (1919), Man's Unconscious Passion (1920), Man's Unconscious Spirit (1921), and A Plea for Monogamy (1923). Across these books, he returned again and again to the same question: how much of human thought and conduct is shaped by motives we do not fully see.
Lay's writing stands out for trying to connect psychology with ordinary experience rather than keeping it inside specialist circles. For listeners interested in the early popular history of psychoanalysis, his work offers a revealing look at how modern ideas about the unconscious were explained to readers of his time.