These volumes cover the two series of lectures given by Freud at the University of Vienna during the winter terms 1915–1916 and 1916–1917. The translation is a new one by James Strachey. The format is as usual, but only Vol. XV has a frontispiece, a reproduction of 'The Prisoner's Dream', also used in the Allen & Unwin 1922 edition. This picture was referred to by Freud as showing 'how correctly the artist grasped the way in which dreams arise from the dominant situation' (135). Among the indexes, which are placed at the end of Vol. XVI, are three useful special ones, of Parapraxes, Dreams, and Symbols. The Editor's Introduction includes an interesting account of Freud's somewhat paradoxical attitude to lecturing. Incidentally the reference here to 'primal phantasies' should be to Lecture XXIII, not XXIV as printed, but the passage is easily found from the General Index.

The Editor tells us that this work had a very extensive circulation and is the 'most translated' of all Freud's books. It is a comprehensive summary of his findings up to the time of presentation. But this is not the only reason why it is so important. It also forms a kind of 'watershed' between Freud's first and second creative periods. True, 'The History of an Infantile Neurosis' and a few other short papers appeared in 1916–1917 (Standard Ed. Vol. XVII) but the 'Infantile Neurosis' had been prepared before these lectures were given. The publications that next followed, and (Standard Ed. Vol. XVIII), mediated the train of thought that was to issue in , and the first definition of the ego as 'a coherent organization of mental processes'. Hints of what is to come occur in these lectures, mostly in Part III.