Freud and His Children: A Review of the Freud–Anna Freud and the Freud–Rank Correspondences

These volumes contain Freud’s correspondence and address his relationships with two of his children. One is his natural child, later disciple and finally successor, his youngest daughter, Anna Freud; the other is his “adopted” child, later disciple and finally disowned “son,” Otto Rank. Both books show the breadth of Freud’s mind and hint at the depth of his feeling, and both demonstrate the complexity of Freud in relationship.

There are dissimilarities between the books, as well. The Correspondence, 1904–1948 (Freud/Freud) book requires a great deal of its readers. It is a model of scholarship, as seemingly every possible piece of information has been wrought from these letters and footnoted, but in my opinion its limited audience will be only the most devoted scholars of Freud and early psychoanalysis. It is a research document—almost a dictionary of psychoanalytic history—full of detailed information about the early history of psychoanalysis. In contrast, by and large The Letters of Sigmund Freud & Otto Rank, Inside Psychoanalysis (Freud/Rank) is a model for a book of psychoanalysis (admittedly, a genre with a limited future, because due to e-mail there will be fewer and fewer sets of correspondences to refer to). Letters are put into context by the editors; reading this book is the easier of the two experiences.

In the Freud/Freud book, I had to read every letter at least twice: first just the text of the letter without referring to the footnotes, then the footnotes themselves, and sometimes finally the letter once again with the footnotes in mind.

Occasionally, I still had to refer back to the footnotes when I could not remember all of them. This made for a disjointed experience. Consider the following telegram from Freud to Anna:

80 SF¹

Csorbato² [2 August 1918] 9h³

Ann Freud at

freund⁴ berg.brau bp X

journey interesting⁵ Willi⁶ delightful⁷

beautiful weather⁸ on mama’s arrival

fresh⁹ and happy¹⁰ luggage