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The commentary (for one cannot really consider it an analysis) which Margaret Whitford kindly devoted to the book Les femmes dans l'Histoire de la psychanalyse betrays a certain incomprehension of what the object of the work was. Apart from a few brief compliments unsupported by any analysis of the contents, the author of the article restricts herself to picking out typing errors in the edition and, above all, to regretting that the work lacked an editorial guidance that might have made it more accessible to a non-specialist public.
There is obviously a misunderstanding here which requires elucidation: the Association Internationale d'Histoire de la Psychanalyse, under whose auspices the meeting that provided these texts was held, has dedicated several conferences and a number of the Revue Internationale d'Histoire de la Psychanalyse (Paris, P.U.F.) to the fascinating epistemological questions which inevitably underlie the history of psychoanalysis. Particularly the question of whether this concern should be in (he hands of historians or psychoanalysts themselves … Professor Whitford modestly associates herself neither with one nor the other, and it is in (he name of the uninitiated public that she demands a 'vade mecutn which would have allowed her to appreciate better the arguments of the texts, on which, meanwhile, she passes no comment.
Now, except in manuals, it is not French traditional practice to overload texts published in collections with such ponderous apparatus. The various authors, rather unencumbered and in their own personal manner, express their viewpoint and style. For the texts speak for themselves; it is not a case of erudite analyses or abstruse considerations which would have required