Cries of the Wolf Man. Patrick J. Mahony. (History of Psychoanalysis Monograph Series, Edited by The Chicago Institute for Psychoanalysis; Monograph 1). New York:  International Universities Press, 1984.  185 pp.

Mahony pursues here the literary-critical method of studying Freud's texts that he first applied to interesting effect in his Freud as a Writer. The subject of this monograph is, as he makes explicit in a prefatory note, not the “wolf man,” Serge Pankejeff, or whatever cries of his may be referred to in the title, but the text of Freud's great case history, “From The History of an Infantile Neurosis,” among his other writings; and its object is Freud. Much of the considerable ancillary literature on this case is nodded to in passing, and a nicely potted biography of Pankejeff is furnished. But Mahony's eye is captivated by Freud's text, which is what his method is impressively well designed to analyze. Briefly (and necessarily a bit crudely), the patient (that is, the wolf man) as he is dealt with here can be compared to a character in a dream of Freud's being analyzed by a very intelligent and attentive, classical Freudian practitioner. The latent content is painstakingly laid bare and interpreted; inconsistencies are found and accounted for; puns are discovered; etc. It is Freud who is being analyzed—always a worthwhile pastime. Mahony is, as earlier, very hard on Strachey's translations. Of course, criticism of any translation is another worthwhile pastime, given the inherent imperfectibility of that art; but Mahony comes to seem highhanded, and ungrateful for Strachey's great, inevitably flawed, achievement. Nevertheless Mahony's own contribution to Freud studies, his particular literary-critical methodology, is by no means negligible or unworthy of gratitude in its turn.