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Ella Freeman Sharpe is already well known to the psychoanalytic public for her work on dream interpretation. Under the title, Collected Papers on Psychoanalysis, Dr. Marjorie Brierley has edited and presented in book form twelve contributions, which, with the exception of the unfinished paper on Hamlet, have already appeared individually in print over a period of some twenty-two years, from 1925 to 1947. Their publication in this form is not only a tribute to the memory of the late Ella Freeman Sharpe, but, as Dr. Jones puts it in his preface, 'a very valuable addition to psychoanalytic literature'. Miss Sharpe's outstanding gifts as a teacher, her rich and varied clinical experience, and her deep appreciation and knowledge of English literature are reflected in the grouping of the papers into three sections, dealing with Technique, Theory, and Literary Interpretation.
The core of the section on Technique is a series of seven lectures delivered to students at the Institute of Psychoanalysis in London, and published in 1930 in the International Journal. These lectures were envisaged therefore as part of the general training program, not as a comprehensive work on the subject. (The date of publication must be borne in mind, as precluding discussion of more recent advances in ego psychology.) They discuss such topics as the general analytic task, mechanisms of defense, management of transference, countertransference, handling of resistances, anxiety, variations of technique in different neuroses, etc. It would of course be possible to take issue with Miss Sharpe on points such as the advisability of discussing 'transference surprise remarks' with students (p. 65), or the statement that 'interpretation of dream material particularly matters sometimes more for the analyst's narcissism than for the patient's progress' (p. 53); but no criticism can obscure the richness of clinical experience, the profound grasp of psychoanalytic problems, and the unusual ability not