The author regards this paper primarily as an affectionate account of events which are remote in time and even somewhat mythical, worthy of recall as a fundamental part of the psychoanalysts' family album; it describes Freud's procedure in his consulting room in the period from 1920 to 1938. The details can be reconstructed from articles and books by a number of people who were in analysis with him during those years and recorded their experiences (mostly people from foreign countries who wished to train as psychoanalysts).

The evocation of those times in Vienna is supplemented by a brief historical outline which places the person of Freud himself—increasingly old and ill as he was, but still highly active professionally and prodigiously creative—and the now worldwide development of the psychoanalytic movement in the sociopolitical setting of the fateful years between the end of the First World War and the Anschluss.