Meeting Freud's Family by Paul Roazen. Published by  University of Massachusetts Press, Amherst, MA, 1993;  220 pages; £24.00.

Meeting Freud's Family is Paul Roazen's most recent contribution to the historiography of psychoanalysis. The book describes Roazen's interviews with members of Freud's family, including three of his children (Anna, Mathilda and Oliver), a daughter-in-law (Esti) and a sister-in-law (Henny). The book is also peppered with information from interviews with members of Freud's metaphorical family, the psychoanalytic movement. Material from the interviews is interspersed with personal impressions of the interviewees and their circumstances and brief accounts of important episodes in the history of psychoanalysis.

Roazen's style is lucid and relaxed. He is also candid in a way which would be impossible for someone within the psychoanalytic community. Some readers may find Roazen's irreverence offensive. For instance, he describes the Hampstead Clinic as having ‘a musty atmosphere of old-fashioned nursery school teachers talking with barely suppressed prurience about the implications of “infantile sexuality“’ (p. 86). A good deal of the book is devoted to Anna Freud who emerges as a censorious autocrat. I found Roazen's exposition refreshing and at times amusing though ultimately sad. The irrationality, paranoia and general interpersonal chaos within the psychoanalytic world create a rather pathetic impression when considered in the light of its spiritual pretensions.

Meeting Freud's Family adds to our understanding of the history of psychoanalysis and Sigmund Freud by drawing on the memories of those few people still alive in the 1960s who knew Freud intimately. There are also lots of good photographs, including an incredibly moving one of a sad, tired Freud taken just before his death. The book will be of considerable interest to anyone interested in the history of psychoanalysis. I had difficulty putting it down and regretted reaching the final page.

David Smith

Regent's College, London