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In 1923 I published a biography of Sigmund Freud1, which appeared in English translation in 1924, and which, because of the nature of the book, received wide attention in scientific circles. It is to the present day cited by psychologists in their lectures and publications, and I have reason to fear that a number of psychologists, rather remote from the field of psychoanalysis, derive a major part of their knowledge of this subject from my book. This has been a source of constant embarrassment to me for I have, in the ten years that have elapsed since the appearance of the book, changed my opinion considerably concerning psychoanalysis and its founder, and therefore can no longer stand sponsor for the errors and misrepresentations which I have come to recognize as such.
It occurred to me that I might make reparation by publishing a new edition of the biography. As I went over the book, however, for this purpose, I realized that it would be a sheer impossibility for me so to transform the work that it would express adequately my present position in regard to Freud and his school to which I belong. The tone of the book throughout is a striking example of ambivalence and it is beyond my power to entirely eradicate it. Passages in which I pay high tribute to Freud alternate with others which hurt not only his work, a brunt which every scholar must bear, but his personality. The book is so written that it is perforce welcome to