A Fragment of Freud's Library

It is known to very few that the library of the New York State Psychiatric Institute in New York City has part of Freud's private library in its possession. The library owes this acquisition to the professional alertness of the Institute's former librarian, Dr. Jacob Schatzky. When Freud left Vienna in 1938, he was unable to take with him a considerable part of his library and many of his books came into the hands of a particular bookdealer. In a cleverly phrased advertisement which concealed from the uninitiated the fact that these were Freud's books, the dealer offered the entire collection to the psychiatric book collectors forum. Dr. Schatzky correctly deciphered the text of the advertisement and purchased the collection unexamined.

Private libraries can be an impressive documentation of the personality, philosophy, and working habits of a scholarly individual. Selection of works, composition of the collection, and last but not least personal annotations in the books have provided unique and valuable information on intimate and otherwise secretly held opinions and experiences. Of course, the relatively small part of Freud's library at the New York Psychiatric Institute cannot offer a comprehensive picture; for that one would need to study the larger part of Freud's library in England. However, even this small collection offers the examiner interesting facts about Freud not to be found elsewhere.

In these books Freud did much underlining and crossing out as well as making many short and long annotations. An over-all examination reveals that his was not only a purely professional working library but that he tried to acquire a library covering the wider aspects of his fields of interest. The collection contains, for instance, works for which he can have had only more or less historical interest: by Wepfer, Willis, Robert Wyeth, Boerhaave, Etzel, and Gall. There are some rarities like Schubert's Symbolik des Traumes and the monographs of Karl Kahlbaum. The