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In this volume Hendrik M. Ruitenbeek has brought together sixty memoirs, reminiscences, and comments reporting impressions of Freud and his work by his pupils, friends, and colleagues. As one might expect, the articles range widely in relevance, interest and sensitivity. The most serious comments on Freud's works seem repetitive and dull. Articles by Brill, Bernfeld, H. Deutsch, and Jones, however, do succeed in bringing Freud alive.
The contributions of the Bernfelds, both Siegfried and Suzanne, are made even more interesting by the publication of a recent article by Harry Trosman and Ernest S. Wolf titled The Bernfeld Collaboration in the Jones Biography of Freud.1 The report of the Bernfelds' devoted scholarship and generosity in making their biographical material available to Jones is very moving.
Other impressions of Freud, written after short visits with him in his later years, are remarkable in their shallowness and almost unbelievable insensitivity. Even respected colleagues in visiting him were turned into autograph collectors and voyeurs. An exception to this pedestrian series of reports is a rewarding article by Herbert Lehmann. An inquiry into the relationship between Freud and Thomas Mann, it is a small, scholarly analytic piece of work consisting of the analysis of a parapraxis made by Freud. It illuminates their relationship and is in the best psychoanalytic tradition.