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In editing and publishing this second volume of Karl Abraham's papers, the author's daughter, Hilda Abraham, M.D., herself a psycho-analyst, has added a most valuable and long-awaited contribution to psycho-analytic literature.
The first volume of Abraham's selected papers was published in book form in English in this Library Series as far back as 1927—that is, two years after the author's death.
In his introductory memoir to the first volume, as well as in the Preface to the second, Ernest Jones refers to Karl Abraham's premature death as 'by far the most severe blow that has befallen the young science of psycho-analysis in the first thirty years of its development.' Abraham's work and what we know of him as a person and as a leader bears out this judgement, for he emerges as a man of the highest scientific and personal integrity. Karl Abraham has created for himself a unique place in the history and development of psycho-analysis, to which Freud makes frequent reference.
It is not only the subject matter which shows Abraham's originality, but the particular gift of presenting his investigations with great lucidity. In some of his writings he takes the reader through difficult territory like a careful and circumspect mountain-climber, which in fact he was. In his thorough way Abraham moves along, step by step, examining the terrain in order to gain stronger footholds. If the problem seems obscure, he directs his searchlight closer to it or, as the case may be, into the distance, relating the question under discussion to more remote ones. After a steep ascent of thoughts he may suddenly disclose a wide view of the inter-relationship of the problems involved. At all times the clarity of his thinking is an outstanding feature of his presentations.
The first volume contains Abraham's more important clinical work; the second gives us a vivid picture of the many-sidedness of his interests. These encompass fascinating analyses of the structure of personalities in the