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Paul Roazen, the well-known historian of psychoanalysis, in 1968 published Freud: Political and Social Thought, followed in 1969 by Brother Animal: The Story of Freud and Tausk. He subsequently published many books on the history of psychoanalysis, including biographies of Erik Erikson and Helene Deutsch and books that deal with the lives of analysts such as Sandor Rado and Edward Glover. Before any of these books were published, Roazen met with Edoardo Weiss (1889-1970), the recognized founder of Italian psychoanalysis who later practiced in Chicago, for twelve interviews in 1965 and 1966. The interviews form a considerable basis of the present book, which successfully combines an interesting and informative biographical study of Weiss with a mini-history of early psychoanalysis. The eminence of Sigmund Freud is always in the background of the book's story, and in choosing the subtitle The House That Freud Built Roazen acknowledged how much the story is about Freud as well as about Weiss.
The twelve interviews deal with, among other things, a correspondence between Weiss and Freud on clinical matters. At the time, Roazen had just started interviewing Helene Deutsch in Cambridge in pursuit of information from living members of Freud's original circle. He contacted Weiss in Chicago because he “knew there had been letters from Freud to Weiss” (p. 10). These letters (written between 1919 and 1936) would eventually be published by Weiss as Sigmund Freud as a Consultant: Recollections of a Pioneer in Psychoanalysis, but not until 1970, the year Weiss died. As the title of that book suggests, the letters are largely about Freud's consultations on Weiss's ongoing