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The book under review is the second in a series of four volumes celebrating the Downstate Psychoanalytic Institute's 25th Anniversary. It is a collection of articles by members of the faculty examining various facets of the five classical cases: Freud's patients of the title. Well known to all analysts, these cases continue to be a vital part of every candidate's psychoanalytic education—and rightly so. They display, in addition to the clinical content, the noted hallmarks of Freud's style. To this day they are impressive for their clarity of expression, sharpness of focus, and taut narrative line. One welcomes the opportunity to reexamine these cases and observe again the nuances of Freud's thought: what he did and did not know, the paradoxical keenness of his mind with regard to some matters and his obtuseness in others, what he considered important and what he overlooked. Above all one notes how often his clinical observations and inferences presaged later theoretical formulations.
In the preface the editors state their desire "to set forth some of the significance of [Freud's] explorations in a form which students and teachers of the broadest aspects of human relationship" can utilize. They do not claim "systematic or comprehensive review" but rather "pragmatic" exploration. And they promise, in addition to the articles themselves, a concluding summary attempting "a synthesis of the historical, technical and conceptual aspects of all the case histories." An ambitious project indeed.
The volume opens with an introduction by Jules Glenn in which the five cases are appropriately placed in the dual perspectives of psychoanalytic history and the development of psychoanalytic theory. Glenn's