Good students often grumble when told Freud is a great writer. They can see his vivid descriptions and his fantastic development of common ideas. They respect his prodigious life work and his pervasive influence on the ways we all listen and read, heal and learn. But just what is it that makes Freud a great writer?

Patrick Mahony, a practicing analyst and Professor of English literature is studying that question. In his first book, Freud as a Writer (1982), Mahony began to focus his inquiry, assemble evidence, and set up some working hypotheses about Freud's style. Now he is working his way through Freud's major case histories. Mahoney has sorted, investigated, and integrated all available letters, interviews, and "reformulations" about Freud's most famous, and perhaps favorite, patient who is widely known as the Wolf Man. This includes 70 years of revisions and ruminations in German, French, and English. Anybody