Psychoanalysts are, by the very nature of their work, students of biography in all its aspects, and compilations of correspondence constitute one such aspect. Here we have the letters of James and Alix Strachey, translators of the Standard Edition of Freud's work, during the longest separation of their marriage, lasting a little more than a year in 1924 and 1925. They had been married in June, 1920, and had gone to Vienna together where they had both been analyzed by Freud, giving them the customary advantages conferred by that experience at that time. However, Alix's analysis had been interrupted by physical illness, and she needed more such therapeutic help. Indeed, she spent many more years in analysis with different therapists. The separation between the two was occasioned by her living in Berlin to be analyzed by Karl Abraham until the latter's premature death terminated what she felt to be a most valuable experience. She was what one