An Almost Complete Standard Edition

I bought my copy of the Standard Edition of the Complete Psychological Works of Sigmund Freud in 1978 at a used bookstore down the street from the original Barnes & Noble in New York City, which at that time was not a souvenir shop with walls and walls of self-help books but a first-rate bookstore with a very extensive and well thought out psychoanalytic section. I would go to Barnes & Noble and eye all the authors of interest to me: Sigmund Freud, the members of the British Object Relations School, Edith Jacobson, Otto Kernberg, and, of course, my ultimate psychoanalytic idol, Heinz Kohut. Since buying their books was beyond my financial means at the time, I would then go to the used bookstore to look for the titles that I needed and could afford. On one such day when I walked in, what did I see, to my delight, but a box holding the Standard Edition at the muchreduced rate of $200. It was like I had struck gold. All the volumes were in perfect condition, with no marks or comments in the margins and all the sleeves intact—except, Volume 7, the volume containing all of Freud's theories of sexuality, was missing.

Despite this flaw, it was an offer too good to pass up, so I purchased the box on the spot. I was finally the proud owner of Freud's works, carrying the complete edition—well, almost complete edition—back to my Upper West Side studio apartment.

I have often wondered what happened to Volume 7. Why was it missing? Who would buy the whole edition and hold on to only Volume 7? Or, who would buy Volume 7 and not the other 23 volumes?

I was now in that position. I had to find a copy of Volume 7.

I already possessed several of Freud's works in German, which is my native tongue, but the Gesammelte Werke (1940–1952; 1968), which had been the only comprehensive German edition of Freud's work, was incomplete, without any editorial comments, and out of print.

Between 1969 and 1975, the German psychoanalyst Alexander Mitscherlich, together with Angela Richards and James Strach