Freud. Appraisals and Reappraisals. Contributions to Freud Studies, Volume 1: Edited by Paul E. Stepansky. Hillsdale, New Jersey: The Analytic Press. 1986. Pp. 266.

Of course the French have a word for it: Annales, the name for the method of reconstructing the past through every day events. For these historians, those such as Daniel Boorstein and Philippe Ariès, the account of battles, revolutions, change of governments and other world shattering events gives way to exploration of the past through study of societal attitudes, belief systems and events of everyday life. In the Annales method we are asked to attend to such things as the impact of the pocket watch on the rhythms of daily life or the availability of artificial light on work production or what happened to scholarship when eyeglasses were invented.

Now, it seems, a similar approach, actually one long practised in the field of psychoanalysis, a type of Annales biography, has come into full flower. Not for these authors the internal, Talmudic-like study of theory. Rather they focus on such things as thought systems prior to Freud's writings, personal and public events and people who in some manner affected Freud the man and the thinker. Thus it comes as no surprise that four of the six contributors to the present volume are from disciplines other than psychoanalysis and medicine. May their tribe increase; they breathe new life into the study of Freud.

With such diverse approaches, as might be expected, the style and quality of topic and presentation varies more than is usual in a collection