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The aim of this book was probably intended to be a strictly limited one. It would seem to be addressed to an imaginary audience of educated people having official influence, who wish to be informed on the question of what attitude a Government should adopt towards lay analysis. To this question it provides a perfectly definite answer, the reader being left in no doubt about Professor Freud's personal views on the matter. The practising analyst, however, aware of all the complicated difficulties of the problem, will not be able to help regretting that Professor Freud had not dealt more briefly with the local authorities of Vienna, perhaps in the form of an essay a quarter the size of the present one, and then devoted the rest of his effort to discussing the technical aspects of the problem with those who would be profoundly interested to listen. For it must be confessed that many of these aspects are glossed over, simplified, or left altogether unmentioned, to an extent that will leave many analysts unsatisfied and only desirous of a fuller exposition.
The book is cast in the form of a Socratic dialogue between Professor Freud and an imaginary (very imaginary!) person of culture who approaches the question in an entirely impartial manner. It is a form which, as we know from, for instance, the Introductory Lectures, is admirably adapted to the author's power of exposition, for it enables the writer to deal most directly with the difficulties and objections that may arise in the mind of the audience. There is one criterion especially necessary for success, rigidly honest impartiality in divining the actual objections of the audience, and this criterion Professor Freud knows well—no one better—how to observe. When one reads Sie werden sagen, one can be sure that one is going to see some troubling difficulty finally resolved. There are a few passages in the present volume in which Professor Freud does not quite reach his exceedingly high standard in this respect.