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This book is an important and unique publication, which will help to augment and revise the early history of psycho-analysis; and it will be of great significance for the understanding of Freud in his interaction with his group. A few of the men who speak to us in these 'Minutes' have been pictured by Ernest Jones in his Freud biography, and we have already heard from his biographer how difficult it was for them to keep working together. 'I no longer get any pleasure from the Viennese. I have a heavy cross to bear with the older generation, Stekel, Adler, Sadger, ' wrote Freud to Abraham in 1910. But among the fifteen or so members of the group there were also some, notably the non-practising members, who in their general erudition and scientific curiosity showed a high and productive team spirit.
In reading the Introduction we can hardly fail to appreciate the editors' satisfaction and pride in having fulfilled a mission entrusted to them by Paul Federn, who died in New York in 1950. The volume, and the two which will follow, have been edited by Herman Nunberg, our youngest octogenarian, and by Ernst Federn, Paul Federn's son, a Viennese lawyer, survivor of a Nazi concentration camp, and now a social worker in Cleveland Ohio. The editors inform us that it was Professor Freud himself who in 1938 entrusted the Minutes to Paul Federn for safe keeping, while both men were preparing their escape from the Nazi terror.
The Minutes are the work of the late Otto Rank, who was the 'official, salaried secretary of the Society, entrusted with the task of recording the meetings.' The three volumes will cover the years 1906 to 1915.
A word should be said about the translation. It will not stand up to scrutiny by Oxbridge standards; it must have been a laborious, almost impossible task to achieve, not easy readability, but even comprehension of the original Viennese idiom; in this M. Nunberg has succeeded admirably and superbly.
Regular meetings of the Psychological Wednesday