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I welcome with enthusiasm the first translation into English of Loch (1993). This book is a little masterpiece that clearly exemplifies the author's methodology. His style, characterized by a deep analysis of the texts and a profound and original refl ection on them, allows him to go mit Freud über Freud hinaus [beyond Freud with Freud]. His impressive cultural background has enabled him to find a special niche for psychoanalysis between art and the sciences, thus subscribing to a postempiricist position.
The work of Wolfgang Loch, a well-known teacher of psychoanalysis in his own country, has remained largely unknown to international readers for too long a time. Apart from a few exceptions—some short texts in the International Journal of Psychoanalysis or in the Bulletin of the European Psychoanalytical Federation, or two books published in Italian—Loch's abundant production has been reserved to German-speaking readers. As Peter Wegner, editor of this excellent version, informs us in the ‘commentary', his lectures at the Medical Faculty of Tübingen University, attended by a faithful audience, were at the basis of his subsequently developed essays. These were oral lessons that were transcribed, maintaining the traces of a fervent refl ection that attempts to connect, without betraying it, Freudian thought to subsequent psychoanalytical literature and his own experience; for, as Wegner reminds us, psychoanalytical knowledge is above all personal, the outcome of one's own analysis and clinical work.
In this book, Loch searches for the origins of the subsequent developments of theory and psychoanalytical technique in Freudian writings. His capacity for finding, even in the oldest works, indications for future paths for research, is noteworthy.
Loch introduces his book with a quotation from Wittgenstein: ‘If you find the signpost, you don't now look for further instruction—you walk' (1975b, paragraph 277). Loch's signpost, in the first chapter entitled ‘The fields of inter