Basic Psychoanalytic Concepts on the Theory of Instincts. Vol.  3 of the Hampstead Clinic Psychoanalytic Library, Humberto Nagera (Ed.). New York:  Basic Books, 1970.  136 pp. Basic Psychoanalytic Concepts on Metapsychology. Conflicts, Anxiety, and Other Subjects. Vol.  4 of the Hampstead Clinic Psychoanalytic Library, Humberto Nagera (Ed.). New York:  Basic Books, 1970.  223 pp.

These two volumes are the inestimable contribution of detailed and thorough researches into the vast literary output of Sigmund Freud conducted by the Hampstead Clinic Psychoanalytic Library. Volume 1, Basic Psychoanalytic Concepts on the Libido Theory, and Volume 2, Basic Psychoanalytic Concepts on the Theory of Dreams, appeared a few years ago. Nagera collaborated with fifteen psychoanalysts and child psychotherapists from the Hampstead Child Therapy Clinic under the directorship of Anna Freud. These volumes represent the combined labor of six years. Each volume “treats a single theme in Freud's thought and gives a concise but exhaustive account of the historical development of the concepts relating to it.”

These books are not a shortcut to the study of psychoanalysis, doing away with a reading of the twenty-three volumes of the Standard Edition of the complete psychological works of Sigmund Freud. On the contrary, by taking single concepts and tracing their historical developments and reformulations, they actually lighten the task of understanding psychoanalytic theory. Anna Freud, who wrote the foreword to the four volumes, described Nagera's purpose as follows: