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Edited by Nathan G. Hale, Jr. Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1971. 384 pp.
FREUD AND THE AMERICANS. The Beginnings of Psychoanalysis in the United States, 1876-1917. By Nathan G. Hale, Jr. New York: Oxford University Press, 1971. 574 pp.
Although these two books are in many ways quite different in character, they have a logical continuity. The first volume, entitled
James Jackson Putnam and Psychoanalysis, centers around the correspondence between Putnam and Freud. Putnam's similar but less important communications with James, Jones, Ferenczi, and Morton Prince during this period help to delineate the viewpoints of these important figures and their respective roles in the development of psychoanalysis. The book gives an excellent intimate picture of Freud and Putnam, a picture almost autobiographical in character.
The second volume, Freud and the Americans, is a lengthy, detailed, and complete study of American psychiatry after 1870 and of the social milieu, ethics, and scientific attitude prevalent in 1909 when Freud delivered his lectures at Clark University. The book describes the primitive roots of the psychoanalytic movement in America, the origins of the American Psychoanalytic Association, and the New York and Boston Psychoanalytic Societies. It includes an enormous amount of data about the people involved as well as their 'somatic styles' and their various psychotherapeutic approaches, including hypnosis, suggestion, and Meyer's psychobiology. This volume, with its mass of historical data, is often redundant and difficult to read. It is a thorough and detailed piece of research but, unfortunately, poorly assembled.
I recommend the first book highly. The many personal and intimate letters between Freud and Putnam reveal the essence of these two brilliant and humane men who were truly interested in understanding each other as they tried to peer more deeply into the psychic life of man, within the context of Freud's early findings: his recog