Briefe an Jeanne Lampl-de Groot 1921–1939 [Sigmund Freud—Letters to Jeanne Lampl-de Groot 1921–1939], by Sigmund Freud

The volume edited by the Dutch psychoanalyst Gertie F. Bögels includes an additional chapter of Freud’s approximately 11,000 extant letters, which are now available in the German edition with a postscript by Joachim Danckwardt. From the correspondence with Lampl-de Groot from 1921 to 1939, only 76 letters from Freud have survived. The themes and subject matter with which Lampl-de Groot addressed Freud can therefore only be inferred from Freud’s answers. However, Bögels’ biographical details about Lampl-de Groot, and some skilfully selected

letters written between 1921 and 1923 to her parents, enable the editor to sketch a lively portrait of this addressee of Freud’s letters. Furthermore, Bögels’ observations, which are both critical and extremely interesting for the history of science, provide a stimulus to further research as well as deeper insights into the network of personal relationships from which psychoanalysis developed. An important part of the developmental history of psychoanalysis is therefore mirrored in the relationship between Freud and Lampl-de Groot that is documented by the letters.

According to Peter Gay, Jeanne Lampl-de Groot (1895–1987) belonged to the group of women around Freud who made their mark on the psychoanalytic profession. With her earliest papers, “The evolution of the Oedipus complex in women” (1928) and “Problems of femininity” (1933), to which Freud also refers in his letters to her, Lampl-de Groot along with other female analysts exercised a strong influence on Freud’s revision of the development of the female Oedipus complex.

In addition to her theoretical papers, the later writings on the treatment technique, papers on narcissism and on child psychoanalysis, Lampl-de Groot became a key figure in the reconstruction of psychoanalytic training in Europe aft