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Reading these three hundred and fifteen letters of Sigmund Freud causes in the reader something resembling the feeling he might get from as many visits with him. Freud wrote a masterful German in an unmistakably individual style, already recognized as distinctive by his early school teachers. Here he writes with a young man's passion for life, with the maturity of the scientist and discoverer, and with the wisdom of the aged man who suffers from life's tragedies but who accepts them with the strength of Moses or Job.
The letters cover a span of sixty-six years. The first was written at the age of seventeen (1882), the last one shortly before his death in London at eighty-three (1939). Almost a third of the letters (over ninety) are to his bride, Martha Bernays. They show Freud as a young man, learning and struggling, patient and impatient, waiting for four and a half years before he could marry. They show his growth, his inner and outer struggles, his maturation, his gaining of a sense of his importance, the achievement of his genius and greatness, his prodigious work, his enthusiasm, and his constant awareness of sickness, misery, and death. They show his relations to his family, including his parents, to his friends and colleagues, to many of the great men of our time, and his reactions to the great events around the turn of the century.
There are several ways to read this book: one may read here and there according to the occasion for which certain letters were written; or one may read the correspondence with certain people and follow them through the years; or one may read the whole book as its editors planned it, chronologically. The bilingual reader should read simultaneously the English and German editions. The translation is superb and preserves most of Freud's special style. Both editions are printed with great craftsmanship and are strikingly illustrated. A minimum of explanatory footnotes serve the reader's understanding without distracting him.