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The first volume of John Rickman's Psycho-Analytical Epitomes was published in 1937. During his lifetime the founder and editor of the series had the satisfaction of seeing it grow, though discrimination in the choice of works and the war years made this growth a slow one. Quite recently the publishers announced that the four volumes so far published are to be re-issued and that further works will be added in the near future under the editorship of Dr. W. H. Gillespie and Dr. W. Clifford M. Scott.
It should be noted that these newly printed volumes are bound very attractively in linen of bright blue colour.
The present volume contains selected chapters from Freud's books and papers written between 1910 and 1926, and it calls upon the reader to let himself be guided through some of the most difficult parts of psycho-analytic theory. After he has found his way through he will enjoy the satisfaction of having acquired not only knowledge of a cross-section of Freud's work but also some glimpses of its development. The latter he could not have achieved merely from the study of Freud's last summary, An Outline of Psycho-Analysis (London: Hogarth Press) published only three years after this anthology. If the reader should desire to learn with ease more of the clinical side, as undoubtedly he will, this reviewer would still recommend the reading of Freud's The Question of Lay Analysis (London: Imago Publishing Co.) which apart from the discussion of the problem laid down in the title contains Freud's most concise presentation of what really happens in psycho-analytic therapy: a description in miniature of the neuroses and their cure.
All these publications will however one day be outdated when, thanks to the devotion of Mr. James Strachey and the support of our colleagues in America, the Standard Edition of the Complete Works of Sigmund Freud is completed. The full range of Freud's work will then be at the reader's disposal from which to make his choice. Mean-while E