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This is a lovely book wherein the editors carefully chose letters from their well-stocked epistolary kitchen with many chefs and set out a delicious smorgasbord for us. With something for every reader's taste, we are greeted first by a blue cover with a snapshot of Freud writing at his desk. That photograph is surrounded by a reproduction of his distinctive, and now quite familiar, handwriting. Immediately upon opening the book, we are welcomed by the elegant writing of the knowledgeable, Patrick Mahoney, who wrote the preface and the first two chapters, the first one about Freud and Fliess, the second about the difficult birth and delivery of the International Psychoanalytic Association. Mahoney reminds us of the extent of Freud's writings. He estimates that there are 14,000 extant letters and that Freud probably wrote 20,000 in all, which, if published, would exceed three times the length of the 24-volume Standard Edition. In this book we find fifteen chapters, written by scholars from nine countries, featuring material from unpublished correspondence.
The book stimulates many questions and provides some interesting answers. For example, why are people interested in other people's letters, and particularly in Freud's? Interspersed in the scholarly exegesis of Freud's correspondence, we find comments about the meaning of the correspondence to the writer, the intended reader, and the “accidental” readers, namely, us. Not surprisingly, letters turn out to have