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Tell me who you read and I will tell you who you are—a person's readings are an essential part of his or her biography and intellectual identity. This is of special interest in the case of Freud: Who were his
antecedents, his sources of inspiration? How did they shape his ideas, his creative genius? Many answers emerge from this slender yet rich source book and indispensable aid to anyone interested in the scholarly study of Freud's life and work. Freud's library, housed in a number of locations and repositories, and listed in a number of catalogues, is now for the first time assembled under one tent.
The moving spirit of this important project is the indefatigable Freud researcher Gerhard Fichtner, chief of the Institute of Ethics and History of Medicine at Tübingen University, compiler of the most comprehensive database on all aspects of Freud's life and work, and author of many scholarly publications on the subject. The German texts have been translated by J. Keith Davies, the Freud Museum Librarian, who also catalogued the books in London. The project is a labor of love, executed with utmost thoroughness and reliability. The bilingual text is accompanied by a CD catalogue and detailed instructions on how to use it, providing a versatile instrument that surpasses the capacity of an ordinary index.
The book begins with Freud's famous dream of the botanical monograph, recorded in The Interpretation of Dreams, in which Freud the bookworm first reveals himself. It takes us from Vienna on the journey to Maresfield Gardens in London, Freud's home in exile, his daughter's home until her death, and today the Freud Museum, a pilgrimage site for thousands of Freud-seekers. There are various useful lists: the current repositories of Freud's library, subject areas of the library, the languages Freud read, the languages into which his works were translated. We get a glimpse of what Freud actually read and what books remained unopened. Of great interest are the many photograp