Preface

The collection of papers by Paula Heimann has been arranged in chronological order to allow the reader to trace ‘the development of her work-philosophy including changes in her approach to the subject-matter’, as she said in a draft introduction when she herself prepared a publication of her papers in 1978. The first date of the papers refers to the presentation of the paper, the second one to its publication. Two papers, chapter 9 and chapter 20, are published here for the first time. Five papers, chapters 8, 14, 15, 18, and 23, appear here for the first time in English. Chapters 21 and 22 were first published in American journals and the original spelling has been maintained in this book.

Not all publications could be included in this book. We were partly guided by Paula Heimann’s own selection when she prepared her book in 1978 but we had to eliminate some additional papers. We have, however, compiled a complete bibliography of all her publications as far as they are known to us. As she has published in several languages, we may have missed some of those which have appeared in foreign-language journals unknown to us.

In view of the fact that Paula Heimann prepared her papers for presentation in various countries, it is inevitable that some of the papers show in part a nearly identical repetition of a point she had made before. We have included such papers in this collection when they set these repetitions in a new context affecting their subject-matter.

In the earlier papers quotations and references to Sigmund Freud have been taken from the Collected Papers and other earlier translations. Care has been taken to refer in the Notes to the respective translations from the Standard Edition.

Notes to the respective translations from the Standard All text in square brackets is editorial comment.