Introduction

When asked by the British Psycho-Analytical Society to prepare a volume of my collected papers it was suggested that I should add some kind of thread that might link them together. I found great difficulty in doing this but eventually realized that there was something too constricting in this image of a thread and the preferable one was that of a tree of which I could recognize various branches. But if a tree, what about the roots? In short, where was I to begin? I decided that as the papers asked for are about the work of being a psycho-analyst I would begin with my earliest serious notions of what work I wanted to do in life. I therefore reminded myself that at the age of 11 I had decided that I wanted to be a naturalist. As I read that naturalists keep notes, I had started a nature diary, writing down anything interesting I saw, found, or heard, adding little drawings, and this went on for nine or ten years. In 1917 I left school after only one term in the sixth form because we had little money for the school fees and I had no thought of staying on to work for a university scholarship. Then, living in the country, in the spring of 1918, I was offered my first job, mornings only, to teach a small Canadian boy how to read. (It did not occur to me to ask why an intelligent boy of 7 had not yet learnt to read. What I did know was that his father was a Canadian officer fighting in the trenches in France.) I was paid seven shillings and sixpence (thirty-seven pence) a week. When the boy got the meaning of a word he was so delighted that he would say, ‘Oh my, oh my!’ After the lessons we would go out on to the heath to look for newts; strange how this so small job seemed to determine my future career. This was because when I told someone how much the boy and I had enjoyed