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This book shows that it was important to the pioneers of psychoanalysis that they adopt a cultured and open minded approach: it also shows the specific influence of one particular cultural and social milieu on a certain development of psychoanalysis itself.
Meizel & Kendrick, Associate Professors of English at New York and Fordham universities respectively, have selected and edited many of the letters exchanged between James and Alix Strachey during the years 1924–25. At this time Alix was living in Berlin being re-analysed by Kark Abraham (both Stracheys had previously been analysed by Freud in Vienna at the same time, between 1920–22).
James was working in London as a practising analyst and was also devoting time to some of the five 'Case Histories' which 'Herr Professor' had commissioned him and Alix to translate when they were in Vienna. Due to the intellectual and professional status of the writers, this correspondence is one of the most fascinating historical documents in the understanding of the pioneering years of the psychoanalytic movement, particularly in Britain.
The letters deal with the lives and personal feelings of Alix and James, with their frustrations and doubts and moments of deep depression and uncertainty about their relationship and the future. They also vividly communicate the moments of great intellectual excitement, and describe the famous meetings and discussions of the Berlin Psychoanalytic Society. Alix and James discuss the small and at that time very provincial circle of psychoanalysts in London and the complex links between the Bloomsbury group and psychoanalysis. The institutional problems relating to the development of psychoanalysis in Austria, Germany and England are examined too, with particular reference to the position of the lay analysts. Particularly amusing and interesting are the portraits of some of the major psychoanalysts of that time, for instance Ernest Jones (towards whom Alix and James felt very ambivalent, becau