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In this outstanding work Ilse Grubrich-Simitis displays her unrivalled, deep knowledge of Freud's oeuvre. She has studied his draft manuscripts, his texts at their different stages, and interweaves with these his correspondence, principally with Ferenczi. Through her work we can follow the creative struggle from the germination of ideas in notes to their gradual shaping in Freud's texts. Freud's elegance of style seduces us to believe that he wrote fluently, sans the perspiration that we know from our own efforts.
Grubrich-Simitis takes us through the history of the various published texts in both German and English. She shows us the deficiencies in these, giving credit to James Strachey for his intimate knowledge of Freud's writings that enabled him to show the continuities in his ideas. However, Strachey, did not situate Freud in the context of the history of ideas, a deficiency that must eventually be remedied.
There are many amazing discoveries detailed: notes, drafts, above all some passages suppressed from publication. Outstanding is Freud's attitude to American psychoanalysis expressed in three whole pages omitted from The Question of Lay Analysis (p. 177). Freud puts the question as to why there has been rampant growth of harmful lay (by which he means wild) analysis in America. He attacks American open-mindedness which permits all variations of psychoanalysis; rich America (this in 1927) has not yet developed training institutes whereas impoverished Europe already had three; Americans lack the level of education of Europeans; the American has no time though he has a passion for large numbers; the American superego seems greatly to mitigate its severity towards the ego where the interests for earning money are concerned! Freud acknowledges that he has said ‘wicked things’ about ‘that country before which we have learned to bow down in the last decade’. Here speaks a proud European. No wonder this passage was omitted.
Freud kept a constant account of his daily w