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This Special Issue of The Psychoanalytic Review is intended to depict the early development of psychoanalysis within Old Vienna by focusing rather narrowly upon four central figures of that era. The life and work of Sigmund Freud and Theodor Reik are familiar to our readers but this may not be so for Arthur Schnitzler and Karl Kraus. Although Kraus is here represented by only one extensive review article, his significance to the Viennese scene and psychoanalysis merits special attention.
Arthur Schnitzler was born in Vienna on May 15, 1862. His father was a highly successful laryngologist, and Schnitzler himself became a physician with particular interest in using hypnosis to investigate hysteria. While still in his twenties Schnitzler became a member of the Young Vienna group, which included such luminary writers as Hugo von Hofmannsthal, Hermann Bahr, and Richard Beer-Hofmann. In the period 1888-1891 he produced a series of lighthearted plays featuring Anatol, a sophisticated and compulsive seducer of women. Anatol's self-deceptions and megalomania are depicted, as well as the enigmatic and illusory nature of love. These plays and other works received both critical praise and popular acclaim and marked the start of Schnitzler's remarkably productive career as one of Austria's outstanding literary figures.
Although Schnitzler soon gave up the practice of medicine,* his clinical acumen remained conspicuous throughout all his writing. Much of his work focused sharply upon the relationship between sexuality and character—a feature that has often led to his being compared to Freud. Schnitzler was also a sensitive social critic, and