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Whoever subscribes to the International Journal of Psycho-Analysis today appreciates that he is receiving a publication which is the official organ of the International Psycho-analytical Association; which has maintained this role successfully over the years in the face of a number of competing rivals; and which, in its pages, is careful to provide space for the main currents in present-day psychoanalytic thinking. When the International Journal stated to appear 50 years ago, there was little reason to expect this combination of achievements, nor were these aspired to at that date.
The International Journal came into being at a period when the publishing house established by Freud in Vienna (Internationaler Psychoanalytischer Verlag) had suffered severe financial reverses due to the first world war and its aftermath. There was urgent need for rescue operations, and these were described vividly by Ernest Jones in his biography of Freud:
[I] Met Rank in Switzerland in March 1919, [where] we concocted a plan that seemed most promising. … A branch of the Verlag should be founded in London that would publish a periodical and English translations of the books appearing in Vienna. All our publications, however, would be printed in Austria, or rather in the new Czecho-Slovakia, where paper and labour were many times cheaper than in England. So we should fulfil the capitalist's dream of producing in a cheap currency and selling in a dear one. The expected profit would of course be used to support the Verlag. … We were very pleased with ourselves for devising such a brilliant scheme.
Unfortunately, the scheme, brilliant as it may have been, ran into many snags and did not, in the long run, bring the financial success which had been anticipated. Jones remarked to this:
This was a disappointment to Freud who … early on had expressed the opinion that 'the German Verlag cannot exist without the English one'.
If thus, behind the scenes, the reasons for establishing an English J