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Lean objectivity barely veils the dramatic struggle reported in this third volume of the Minutes of the Vienna Psychoanalytic Society as Freud tries to safeguard the "wonderful diversity of psychology" by purging Adler and his followers from the founder's inner circle. This book, like the two volumes that preceded it, is both a historical documentation of the earliest years of an organized psychoanalytic movement and, at the same time, a window onto the early development
of psychoanalytic thought as it emerged from the dialogue of Freud and his circle of collaborators, admirers, critics, detractors, and just plain hangers-on.
Organized psychoanalysis owes it origins to Freud's increasing sense of isolation during the months when the bonds of friendship with Fliess grew more tenuous. In the fall of 1902 Freud invited Adler, Kahane, Reitler, and Stekel to meet regularly with him at his house for the discussion of his work. The "Psychological Wednesday Society" soon took in additional members, and from 1906 until 1915 Otto Rank, as the official secretary of the Society, recorded the minutes. In 1908 a reorganization resulted in the more formal designation of "Vienna Psychoanalytic Society," and after 1910 the meetings were moved from Freud's private home to larger quarters. World War I brought its difficulties, not the least of which was that Rank had to join the military service in 1915. After Rank's departure, the recorded minutes became very fragmentary and there are no known plans for their publication. The present volume, the third in the series, with one more to follow, reports on 40 meetings from October 1910 to December 1911. The minutes for the meeting of 31 May, 1911, the last of the 1910-1911 season, are missing. One cannot help but be intrigued by this singular omission, inasmuch as only two weeks later Freud wrote Jung that he finally got rid of Adler (who had normally participated and had shown no signs of wishing to resign as late as the meetin