Lire Freud. Découverte chronologique de l'oeuvre de Freud [Reading Freud. A chronological exploration of Freud's writings] by Jean-Michel Quinodoz Paris:  Presses Universitaires de France. 2004.  325 pp.

This book is a helpful aid to the teaching or the studying of Freud's writings. Its presentation is imaginative and its content is instructive.

As I started to read this book, I was reminded of my early struggles with understanding Freud. For decades, the tradition in most analytic societies and certainly in the British Psycho-Analytical Society (BPaS) has been to immerse first-year candidates in the study of Freud's writings. Usually the courses consist of a chronological study of Freud's work. Although the teaching occurs in small groups with dynamic teachers and plenty of animated discussion, the knowledge thus acquired remains somewhat undigested and intellectual. In BPaS, not infrequently, candidates believe that the thorough study of Freud's texts is a necessary homage paid to the founder of psychoanalysis but that the exciting bits will come in later years with the learning of more contemporary authors. I think that this phenomenon is to a large extent due to the fact that the candidates are not yet working as psychoanalysts with patients on the couch and have thus only the experience of their own analysis to resonate in some depth with Freud's amazing discoveries. When a further seminar on Freud is on offer for advanced students, it is mostly attended with enthusiasm. By then there is a new kind of interest about going back to the origins of psychoanalysis. Through the analytic work with patients, new questions constantly arise, which frequently gives the analyst the wish to find out how Freud addressed the problem and how his ideas were revised and often transformed in the different phases of his work. Thinking back to these days, I can feel some regret that we could not avail ourselves of such a clear and helpful book as this, an excellent companion text which will prove so helpful to many in their quest to deepen their understanding of Freud.

Jean-Michel Quinodoz reminds us that one can read Freud in two ways: by pinpointing and following certain of Freud's