The Complete Letters of Sigmund Freud to Wilhelm Fliess, 1887-1904: Translated and edited by Jeffrey Moussaieff Masson. Cambridge, Mass./London: The Belknap Press of Harvard University Press, 1985. 505 pp.

This is a most scholarly work that belongs in every psychoanalyst's library. The Origins of Psychoanalysis1 contained only a little more than half of the Freud-Fliess letters. We can now read all 284 letters, including 133 which did not appear before. There are no deletions except for the disguising of patients' names and the omission of the "Project for a Scientific Psychology," which is available in the Standard Edition, in an excellent translation, and in The Origins. Included are both newly discovered letters and letters which were intentionally omitted in The Origins.

The scholarship appears immaculate. Lotte Newman prepared a draft of the translation, and Masson and Marianne Loring revised it several times. Anna Freud and others were consulted when needed. Footnotes identify persons who are mentioned and clarify some confusions. Most of these are helpful, but a few seem unnecessary. For those who do not know the languages, translations of the German titles of articles and of Latin and French quotations would have been useful.

Readers are expected to be able to place the letters in historical perspective, either through knowledge they have accumulated or by concurrently reading books and articles which Masson suggests. These include the Jones and Schur biographies of Freud2 and Kris's introduction to The Origins. Personal views of the editor, which have aroused controversy,3 are hinted at only minimally in the footnotes. Objectivity is aimed at and achieved.