The Meaning of Illness. Selected Psychoanalytic Writings Including his Correspondence with Sigmund Freud: By Georg Groddeck. Edited by Lore Schacht. New York: International Universities Press, Inc., 1977. 270 pp.

"I arrived at my … views not by studying neuroses but by observing complaints that are commonly called organic," wrote Georg Groddeck in May 1917 in a letter asking Sigmund Freud for permission to count himself a psychoanalyst. Freud responded affirmatively: "… you are a splendid analyst who has understood forever the essential aspects of the matter. The discovery that transference and resistance are the most important aspects of treatment turns a person irretrievably into a member of the wild army. No matter if he calls the unconscious 'It'" (p. 36). Thus began that remarkable relationship between the "wild analyst," as Groddeck began to call himself, and Freud, whom he revered as his "most respected teacher and dearly beloved human being."

The present volume contains two kinds of writings, many of which are of interest to contemporary psychoanalysts. First, there is a correspondence with Freud spanning the years from 1917 to 1934, the year of Groddeck's death; second, there are selections from Groddeck's scientific works. The whole is ably edited and introduced by Lore Schacht.

The correspondence contains forty-four letters by Groddeck (some of which are co-authored by his wife) and thirty-six letters by Sigmund Freud. Groddeck proves himself to be a brilliant and, at times, original thinker. His great admiration for Freud, whose approval he constantly solicited, seems not to have dissuaded him from stating his own divergent views modestly but with the forcefulness born of conviction. Freud, for his part, accepted the younger man's contributions with kindly encouragement but with increasing skepticism. He chided Groddeck for not having overcome his "trivial ambition of claiming originality and priority" and for being a monistic philosopher who "discards all the beautiful differences in nature in favor of the temptation offered by unity" (p. 38). In spite of misgivings,