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DEAR SIR,
A distortion in my article, 'Freud's Self-Analysis and the Nature of Psychoanalytic Criticism' (this journal, 1977, vol. 4, pp. 253–80) has been pointed out to me by Patrick J. Mahoney, Ph.D. I attribute to Vincent Brome (Freud and his Early Circle, 1967) the statement that Wilhelm Fliess's half of the correspondence with Freud had actually been printed privately by Fliess in 1906. Brome's statement is that 'In Eigener Sache by Wilhelm Fliess, a booklet … privately printed the Freud–Fliess correspondence' (p. viii). The pamphlet Brome referred to certainly did not contain the Fliess letters from the period of Freud's self-analysis, as I mistakenly assumed. My further assertion that Ernest Jones knew of the existence of those early Fliess letters and that he withheld this knowledge from Max Schur, is therefore erroneous.
It is true, however, that throughout Schur's book, Freud: Living and Dying, the rare pamphlet In Eigener Sache is never quoted, despite Schur's coverage of the material it contains and despite his listing of the pamphlet in his bibliography. I take it that the pamphlet did remain very hard to obtain, and I think it reasonable still to attribute that difficulty, in part, to the opposition that Jones and other members of the psychoanalytic community bore towards full publication of this and other relevant documents concerning Freud's self-analysis.
I wish to express my regret for offering a misleading account of this matter to readers of this journal. While I do not wish to excuse my error, I would hope that the major point would continue to be evident: full publication of the Freud–Fliess correspondence, to the extent that we have it, should be undertaken. It was apparently considered a permissible publishing project in 1972, when Schur's book came out; a footnote there (p. 14) promises ' unabridged publication' of the correspondence.