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It is not difficult to see at first glance that in Goethe Eissler has produced his magnum opus. No matter what a reader's differences with Eissler
may be, he must accept the author's claim that he has worked on this 'study' since 1948, and had 'to step into the role of a Goetheforscher.' Eissler is aware 'that in going beyond my function of psycho-analyst I am liable to the criticism of the experts in the field.'
This, in turn, leads him (and the reviewer) to the important question: Does a psycho-analyst have to be a literary critic or Goetheforscher in order to write about a man of letters? Eissler served his apprenticeship (Gesellenstück) in this special field when he wrote a psycho-analytic study of Leonardo da Vinci. Admittedly, compared with Goethe, little is known about the Renaissance artist and his life. (Some of his works have been lost or are mouldering away, like his 'Last Supper'.) However, the very fact that Eissler was able to write a masterly study of Leonardo proves that the analyst can deduce or 'interpret' from 'between the lines' what the layman cannot. (Eissler himself makes reference to his one and only famous predecessor in such analytical studies, Marie Bonaparte, the author of The Life and Works of Edgar Allan Poe.) Therefore, it seems to me that Eissler does not have to be defensive (as he admits he is) about his limited knowledge of the Goetheforschung. He is, if anything, over-modest when he states that he does not 'feel responsible for the proper treatment of the Goethe literature'. We certainly agree with him that from his, the psycho-analytic, approach Eissler had to use 'an almost exclusively clinical one'. His bibliography contains 562 titles, which when properly digested embrace a vast, encyclopedic knowledge in which few can match him. Most of the important biographers and literary critics of Goethe seem to be included (the omission of Wolfgang Schadewaldt's Goethestudien, with its important chapter on 'Begriff der Rea