Beyond the Pleasure Principle: By Sigmund Freud. A New Translation by James Strachey. No. 4, The International Psycho-Analytical Library, edited by Ernest Jones. (London: The Hogarth Press and Institute of Psycho-Analysis, 1950. Pp. 97. Price 7 s. 6 d.)

For some time past the new translations of Freud by James Strachey have been appearing at intervals. They will eventually form a complete and uniform series in which a consistent standpoint is maintained towards problems of terminology, indexing and bibliography. Concepts too can preserve their historical continuity as between one work and another, for Mr. Strachey knits the single topic as well as the single work into the series by cross-references. He hopes also to provide eventually a universal index which should serve this same purpose.

The value of the new series can be felt in the present volume. If the 1922 translation by C. J. M. Hubback is read chapter by chapter with the new one, Strachey's volume gives the impression that with the passage of years we are more at home with the work than we were in 1922. Freud's metaphors which were innovations then are familiar to us now. They do not any longer require the formal and to our ears pedantic handling which was accorded to them at first. The remoteness of German and of formal Latin is diminished: 'Antennæ' become 'Feelers' and 'W-Bw' becomes 'Pcpt-Cs'. Schmerz and Unlust are both rendered 'Unpleasure' so that we do not any longer have to remember the difference between 'pain' and pain as we did before. Nor are we in any risk to-day of confusing J. Breuer and S. Freud with any other pair of authors when their names appear without their initials.

In the new volume there are additional footnotes which give cross-references and emendatory notes, as for example on page 4 where there is a footnote upon the history of the Constancy principle. On page 72 Freud refers to opinions which he expressed earlier in the book and now wishes to amend. Mr. Strachey obligingly tells us that the earlier references were made upon pages 51 and 53. In all these little ways the thread of Freud's argument becomes much clearer to the present-day reader.

Less conspicuous but more fundamental is the way that passages in the new t