You do not currently have permission to view the full text for this document. Please sign in to an account with an active subscription or contact support.
The history of the development of psychoanalytic literature has not been written yet, but when it is the contributions of Karl Abraham will occupy an outstanding place. Bertram D. Lewin, in his excellent Introduction, gives valid reasons for the republication of Abraham's most representative papers. Though we are all familiar with them, rereading them is still valuable, not only because one always finds details, ideas which seem to be new, but because it is always refreshing to witness the vigorous spirit of the early days of an expanding science. To state the difference in conceptualization, terminology, and emphasis between Abraham's theoretical framework and the present-day approach in psychoanalysis would not be justified. Clinical experience accumulated since Abraham's publications and new theoretical models developed since then could not have been anticipated by him. Much more astonishing is how many of his findings remain valid.
This book is so full of gems of clinical observation that it is hard to select samples. Just to mention a few: the beautiful illustrations of the introjective mechanism now so familiar to every student of depressive states; or the observation about the roots of castration anxiety in the male melancholic patient which, according to Abraham, were more centered around the mother figure, thus reversing the typical Oedipal form. Lewin, in his Introduction, quotes Hanns Sachs that Abraham's work contains a wealth of suggestions and hints, the possibilities of which remain unexhausted. The observation regarding castration anxiety is a good example of this unlimited potential.
It must be difficult for the young generation of psychoanalysts to realize what courage was necessary to undertake psychoanalytic treatment of severe depressives or manic depressives in Abraham's day. The climate in Germany at that time was utterly hostile and incredulous toward such an endeavor. According to the prevailing psychiatric attitude, manic depressiv