You do not currently have permission to view the full text for this document. Please sign in to an account with an active subscription or contact support.
The author, is a well known Harvard psychologist, was in correspondence with Freud from 1930 to 1939. He received altogether 19 communications from Freud, six of which he obtained permission to publish. Four of them have been included in the third volume of Ernest Jones' Freud biography. Around the six letters Roback has written a readable book which, though adding little of importance to the knowledge about Freud, reflects the author's attitude to and preoccupation with psycho-analysis. He never met Freud personally, but introduced himself through the presentation of his book on Jewish influence on modern thought. Freud found the writer both likeable and irritating. He was inclined to excuse his very direct and not always well-informed criticism with his mixed American-Jewish cultural background. At a certain stage Roback planned to undergo a training analysis but nothing came of this. Although he always tried to be fair to Freud, he had difficulties in understanding his work. He rejected the interpretation of lapses, the most generally accepted of Freud's contributions, almost entirely, and rather naïvely thought that they could be easily explained as the results of formal thought or speech disorders. The concept of overdetermination, so obvious and inescapable to the clinician, eluded him. Freud showed indulgence with his critic, even when he found him rather annoying. This he expressed quite plainly when Roback set about soliciting contributions from famous writers and scientists, most of whom knew little or nothing about psycho-analysis, for a jubilee volume on the occasion of Freud's 80th birthday. This plan fell through very much to Freud's satisfaction. Bernard Shaw, Romain Rolland, E. Bleuler, Havelock Ellis, Max Dessoir, C. S. Myers, and Kretschmer politely declined the invitation, mainly for the reason that they did not feel qualified to contribute an appraisal of Freud's work. These letters and a few others accepting the invitation have be