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I have been trying for more than two years to write a review of this book. But I have not been able to do it. Each time I have tried to force myself to write the review, the effort has been unsuccessful. I finally came to the realization that the only way I could do it was to write about what I had come to recognize were the reasons I did not want to do it. My response to the book has been to wonder why it was written, why it was published, and why I should recommend that anyone read it.
What is the rationale for publishing a book like this? The reason might be the same, it could be said, as for televising the O. J. Simpson trial. Those who are successful and famous inevitably become objects of admiration and awe, on one hand, and of envy and hostility on the other. We honor giants, but it can be very difficult to resist the opportunity to be a giant-killer.
But there is more to this painful book even than that. Peter Heller (1940), who conceived of, edited, and provided the annotations in this book, was one of the children at The Hietzing School who were analyzed by Anna Freud. He has written about the experience. His description of that early effort to psychoanalyze a child was not very flattering to Miss Freud as an analyst. In this book, he is even less flattering to her as a person. The psychoanalytic movement, at least in its early stage, does not come off much better.
The volume is organized around 55 letters written by Miss Freud to Eva Rosenfeld between 1924 and 1932, all but 10 of which date from the three-year period between 1929 and 1931, and two very brief ones she wrote to her in 1967 and 1975. They are supplemented by excerpts from letters written to Anna by Eva Rosenfeld in 1946, 1947, 1957, and 1975. Heller is assisted by “psychoanalyst Gunther Bittner, historian of child analysis and the