The Standard Edition of the Complete Psychological Works of Sigmund Freud: Translated from the German under the general editorship of James Strachey, in collaboration with Anna Freud, assisted by Alix Strachey and Alan Tyson. Vol. XIX (1923–1925) The Ego and the Id and Other Works. Vol. XXII (1932–1936) New Introductory Lectures on Psycho-Analysis and Other Works. (London: Hogarth Press and Institute of Psycho-Analysis. Vol. XIX, 1961, pp. vii + 320. Vol. XXII, 1964, pp. vi + 282. £50 the set of 24 vols; sold only in sets.)

The main works in these two volumes cover much the same ground. The Ego and the Id marks the culmination of Freud's second great creative period, setting out his conclusions as to the three-fold constitution of the psyche and the two classes of instinct, Eros and Thanatos. The most important of the New Introductory Lectures restate and summarize these hypotheses, with some further discussion of difficulties and fresh ideas accruing during the intervening years.

The Editor's Introduction to The Ego and the Id gives an account of the pre-history of the new theories. Two important incentives were the recognition that the ego is not coterminous with consciousness and that the term 'unconscious' applied to three different conditions, i.e. the true dynamic unconscious, the preconscious, and the superego and ego-ideal. The dynamic unconscious now becomes the id, the unorganized reservoir of instinctual drives. The ego had formerly been considered to be this reservoir. Difficulties connected with this transition and with the amoeba simile of object-investment are discussed in the Editor's Appendix B. The 'repressed' formerly equated with the unconscious now becomes a part of the id. This introduces a certain contradiction, since the 'repressed' seldom lacks organization. Appendix A relates a misunderstanding of Ferenczi's regarding the descriptive and dynamic unconscious.

Though Freud admitted that visual and other sensory images could revive as such, he regarded the essential link between the preconscious and consciousness as verbal. This seems to give words a faintly magical character but it could be that their recall-enabling function is due to the fact that the bulk of preconscious memories are mostly post-oedipal in origin and seldom date much before a time when children already have a fair command of language.

In regard to the ego we find two definitions, one relating to its origin and the other to its essential character. Thus it is 'that part of the id which