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This book is highly recommended for many reasons. For those with a historical bent, it is a voyage through psychoanalytic thinking from 1927 through 1957, the 30 years of these collected works. This is a condensed, concise overview of psychoanalysis as it was evolving, with clear restatements of some of Freud's seminal papers on fundamental precepts concerning theory and technique. Sterba's Collected Papers are a worthy recapitulation for the schooled, and a good introduction to psychoanalysis for the neophyte. The reader, following the chronological ordering of the papers in the book, also senses Sterba's professional development. His early papers are clear restatements of Freud, limited by the explanatory power of drive theory and libidinal phases. As he develops his own ideas, one appreciates his depth, range, wisdom, and creative thought. He is well versed in theory and is a sound, sensitive, intuitive clinician.
Integral to the Collected Papers are the Foreword by Grinstein, who describes Sterba and the times in which he wrote, and Daldin's Preface, in which he credits Sterba with being among those in the forefront of the current shift from id psychology to ego psychology.
Sterba was born in 1898 to a cultured, middle-class, nonpracticing Catholic Viennese family. In the course of his medical training, he became exposed to and inspired by Freud's writings, and undertook a psychoanalytic course of study. He received his certification as a psychoanalyst with Freud and Helene Deutsch. Among others, he studied with Reich, Deutsch, and Nunberg, and attended Freud's Wednesday evening seminars. He became librarian of the Psychoanalytical Institute and Society, and a training analyst and faculty member at the Vienna Institute. Sterba's integrity was tested when, in 1938 he refused the offer of the prestigious Directorship of the Vienna Institute and Clinic, and opted rather to “share the fate of his Jewish colleagues,” leaving his country for Switzerland. Wanting to join