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The Editor of the JOURNAL has asked me to record some memories of the introduction of psycho-analysis into English-speaking countries. The occasion of the request was the publication of a preface by the late Professor Freud to the M. D. Eder Memorial volume in which he remarks that Dr. Eder was the first doctor to practise psycho-analysis in England, a statement which is quite incorrect. Reflecting that if even Professor Freud's unusual powers of recollection could err on such a simple point it could not be easy to establish the true facts, the Editor suggested that it would be of interest to have on record an outline of these early events before the memory of them pass away and the history of them be either defective or actually falsified. The choice of those qualified to undertake this task is evidently extremely restricted, so, after some reluctance, I agreed to undertake it.
The name of Freud had been known in this country in the last twenty years of the past century as that of a neurologist. His neurological work had been regularly reviewed in Brain, and he had indeed contributed a technical paper to that periodical. The first indication in this country of his psychological interests was an account of the first Breuer and Freud paper (published in Vienna in January, 1893) that was given some three months later by F. W. H. Myers at a general meeting of the Society for Psychical Research and printed in their Proceedings for June of that year. So we note the remarkable fact that the first new discoveries in what became psycho-analysis were accessible to English readers fifty-two years ago, within six months of their being announced. Four years later (March, 1897) Myers delivered an address before the same society on 'Hysteria and Genius' in which he gave an account of the Studien über Hysterie. This was summarized at the time in the society's Journal and published at much greater length in the author's Human Personality which appeared in 1903 two years afte