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The Second Volume of the Minutes of the Vienna Psychoanalytic Society now affords us the opportunity to continue as observers through two more momentous years of the 'Psychological Wednesday Meetings'. The spring before, the group had constituted itself the Vienna Psychoanalytic Association and, two years later, at the Meeting on April 6, 1910, we hear of the foundation of the International Psychoanalytic Association at the Nuremberg Congress. This volume spans two academic years from October 7, 1908, to June 15, 1910. Meetings were held weekly from October to June and the minutes are those recorded by Otto Rank, who continued to act as the paid secretary of the Society.
In a brief acknowledgment, the editors offer their regrets for the delay in the arrival of this second volume. All of us are in debt to the editors for the arduous task they have undertaken and are in the process of carrying through. The delay in publication of this volume has only served to increase the anticipatory pleasure of being able to continue to participate in this vicarious way in an experience so central and so important in the early development and spread of psychoanalysis. We can certainly hope that the third volume will soon arrive to complete this important historical record.
What is clear from even a casual perusal of these Minutes is the important and multiple functions these meetings served for all of the participants. This small group—usually numbering between ten and fifteen—gathered to present and discuss papers they had written or were in the process of writing, review articles and books in the recent literature, present clinical case material which was discussed from both a theoretical and a practical viewpoint, expose aspects of their own neuroses, discuss each others' blind spots and character traits with varying degrees of objectivity, and explore the relationship between psychoanalysis and art, poetry, pedagogy, philosophy, politics, drama, epistomology, etc. These m