A Moment of Transition: Two Neuroscientific Articles by Sigmund Freud: Translated and edited by Mark Solms and Michael Saling. London: Institute of Psychoanalysis. London and New York: Karnac Books. 1990. Pp. 164.

In spite of the substantial literature concerning the relevance of Freud's neurological background to the foundations of psychoanalysis, only seven of Freud's hundred neurological articles have previously been translated into English.

In this most important book, two further articles, 'Aphasie' and 'Gehirn' (Brain), are translated into English for the first time. Solms & Saling are both the translators and the editors. They provide a most scholarly commentary on issues of considerable contemporary relevance concerning the scientific origins and foundations of psychoanalytic theory.

The two articles translated and studied in this volume were written for a dictionary (Valleret's) in 1888. The authors give clear evidence that these articles were indeed written by Freud (the entries in the encyclopedia were not signed). By 1888, Freud had already visited Charcot, was using hypnosis and was writing and lecturing on hysteria. These articles were written therefore before Freud's famous articles 'On aphasia' (1891) and the 'Project' (1895) and as suggested in the title of the book occur at 'a moment of transition' when Freud was shifting his preoccupations from matters neurological to matters psychological.

Much of the academic criticisms of Freuds' early psychoanalytic ideas derives from judgements that these concepts are based on the accepted neurophysiological and neuroanatomical theories of his time. The fact that these latter postulates have been shown to be false has led to the argument that the early psychoanalytic concepts and foundations of metapsychology must also be false.

In a previous contribution, the authors of A Moment of Transition reviewed aspects of Freud's 'Project' and the discussions and controversies that have used that posthumous publication to debate the neurological foundation of Freud's psychoanalytic concepts (Solms & Saling, 1986). They provided convincing evidence that the major constructs used in the 'Project' were not based on the contempo