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Historical accounts may be characterized by the mass of facts they present, by the quality and form in which they render these facts, or by the fresh perspectives from which they view past events. A few are characterized by the fundamental hypotheses they propose; in such instances the text merely serves to promote these proposals. Henri E. Ellenberger's book, The Discovery of the Unconscious, requires judgments in all four respects.
To begin with, it is surely a book of facts: the volume has nine hundred thirty-two pages and twenty-six hundred fifty notes and bibliographic references. One frequently stumbles over several numbered annotations while trying to negotiate a single sentence. The book sags under the weight of traditional scholarly research. We find here the origin of the term 'rapport'; the truth about Anna O.; the delightful tale of the exorcist priest, Gassner; Freud's hitherto unrevealed military service records. The abundance of such material is a measure of the author's perseverance and of his meticulous search for data.
With this collection of data, Ellenberger attempts a synthetic and sequential exposition of the emergence of contemporary psychology in the past century or two. He explores the lives of the players in his restricted drama; he examines the theories and systems they helped create; and, finally, he presents both narrow and sweeping hypotheses to bring formal order to these elements.
His synthetic and sequential exposition is a striking tour de force. Chapter 10 attempts an almost year by year compilation of seemingly disparate events between 1882 and 1945. In the description of 1889, for example, Ellenberger concerns himself with the sensational deaths of Prince Rudolf and the Baroness Maria Vetsera, Boulanger's success in the general elections in France, Nietzsche's psychosis, the Universal Exhibition in Paris, and several International Congresses, complete with abstracts of comments by observers such as Bernheim. The panorama