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Writings about Freud's patients have proliferated over the years, so that an extensive literature on each of them now exists. Most of this literature has been the work of analysts seeking to add factual information, in order to broaden the context for understanding cases and/or to re-examine the cases from the vantage point of modern theory and technique. That these re-examinations have certain inherent difficulties has been pointed out by Anna Freud, who warned about the temptation, bred by familiarity with the case, "to test the interpretations given, to probe beyond the conclusions drawn."1 Others—for example, Blum2—while noting the problems involved in these re-examinations, have stressed the value of such endeavors, in the light of all the advances in structural theory, ego psychology, and child observation which have been made since the original publication of the cases.
Obholzer's book is different from most works on the case histories, in that it is written by a lay person whose motivations, techniques, and skills are different from those of an analyst. She is an Austrian journalist who, in detective-like fashion, hunted down the Wolf-Man in 1973 after having read the German language translation of The Wolf-Man by The Wolf-Man. She wished to further her journalistic career by making a "scoop" for her newspaper. Overcoming the objections of the then eighty-six-year-old Russian émigré, she got her story, which was "published and attracted some attention and praise, but I had expected more" (p. 6). A year and a half later, she got her chance for "more" when a publisher approached