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This volume is an exception to the rule that symposium papers make bad books. A group of scholars met in London in October 1986 to discuss the dissemination (and transformation) of Freud's ideas in the course of the migration of psychoanalysis from Vienna to London. Appropriately, this volume, derived from that discussion, appeared near the 50th anniversary of Freud's arrival in London after his escape from the Nazis: hence, the title, Freud in Exile.
The scholars represented in this volume are mainly social scientists, philosophers, historians, and political scientists, all interested in psychoanalysis, many of them trained as analysts. The collection of essays reflects deep scholarly and interdisciplinary interests, all to the enrichment of psychoanalytic theory. Beautifully written, the essays provide intellectual stimulation over a wide range of issues of historic interest to psychoanalysis and social science. These include lay analysis, the scientific status of psychoanalysis, the role of Ernest Jones in the development of psychoanalysis in English-speaking countries, the fate of analysts as refugees, possible misinterpretations in translating Freud into a "Standard Edition," psychoanalysis and feminism, and the relation of psychoanalysis to psychotherapy.
While a book of this sort should not be judged in terms of critical arguments around a central theme, what emerges from this lively volume of essays is a sense that psychoanalysis has been affected by the cultures in which it found itself, both in its natural migration as a science and in its forced migration under the onslaught of Hitler and World War II.
There is much to ponder—for example, the problems arising in translating Freud from German into English. In the judgment of