An Unknown Review by Freud1

[We owe the possibility of publishing this translation of a hitherto unknown review by Freud to the energy of Professor Saul Rosenzweig of Washington University, St. Louis, Missouri, who unearthed it recently and very kindly supplied us with a photostat of the original. The review was published in the Journal für Psychologie und Neurologie, Volume 3 (1904), pp. 190–1 (Leipzig: J. A. Barth), issued under the direction of August Forel and Oskar Vogt. This periodical was a continuation of the earlier Zeitschrift für Hypnotismus, to which, more than ten years earlier, Freud had contributed his paper on "A Case of Successful Treatment by Hypnotism" (1892–93). The book under review (Die Psychischen Zwangserscheinungen), by Leopold Löwenfeld, is actually one which contained an essay by Freud himself—"Freud's Psycho-Analytic Procedure" (1904 a), Standard Ed., 7, 249. Here, however, Freud goes back further—to his "Reply to Criticisms of my Paper on Anxiety Neurosis" (1895 f, Standard Ed., 3, 122) which was largely concerned with objections raised by Löwenfeld. The present review is, in fact, little more than a summary of some of the points made in Freud's earlier paper. Some account of Löwenfeld and of his relations with Freud will be found in an Editor's Note to this latter work. This review should by rights have been included in Volume VII of the Standard Edition; but it has come to light too late.]

Under the title of The Phenomena of Psychical Compulsion, the volume before us by Löwenfeld covers a considerable section of the clinical aspects and symptomatology of the neuroses: it combines in itself once again all the merits which have made the comprehensive treatises of the Munich neuropathologist so valuable, and indeed indispensable, to all his fellow specialists. The quite extraordinary mastery of the literature of the subject shown by the author, the wealth of his own observations and the clarity of his style should not, however, cause the reader to forget