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Psychoanalytic researchers and scholars in Freud studies have a boundless sense of gratitude to Alexander Grinstein. It is difficult to imagine anyone reviewing the literature on an analytic topic who has not consulted Grinstein's monumental The Index of Psychoanalytic Writings or his Sigmund Freud's Writings, the best comprehensive bibliography on Freud's work. In the particular field of Freud biography, his 1968 volume, On Sigmund Freud's Dreams, has been equally indispensable for many. Grinstein's industriousness and care, his diligence in hunting out and revealing obscure and hidden articles, have been a boon to many who have mined this field.
In Freud at the Crossroads, he offers us additional insights into the life of Freud, and he continues to open new vistas for our understanding. Freud at the Crossroads deals with the period of Freud's life between 1892 and 1906. Grinstein's method is as follows: he selects seven of Freud's dreams (as well as four literary references in letters to Fliess between 1892 and 1900) from this critical life span and, basing his analyses on Freud's associations, he offers cogent observations on Freud's psychological conflicts and their transformations. Grinstein's interest is not only in revealing the conflicts themselves but, in addition, the raw material, the data with which Freud worked. More than half of the book is taken up with a description of these dreams and Freud's associational material.
The remainder, and thus a substantial portion, offers us an in-depth description of a list of 'ten good books' compiled by Freud in 1906. In that year, Hugo Heller, a publisher and bookseller who had joined Freud's Wednesday psychoanalytic group in 1902, asked a number of prominent figures to send him a list of their choice of 'ten good books'. Freud complied, and we have known of this selection since their appearance in Volume 9 of the Standard Edition under the heading of 'Contribution to a Questionnaire on Reading' (pp. 245–7)