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(a) German Edition:
1892-4 In J.-M. Charcot, Poliklinische Vorträge [Out-patient Lectures], 1, Academic Year 1887-1888, iii-vi, Leipzig and Vienna, Deuticke.
These seem never to have been reprinted and the present translation (by James Strachey) is the first into English. The French volume was published in Paris in 1888.
The date of publication of Freud's translation raises some rather doubtful questions of chronology. His preface is dated ‘June, 1892’ and the title-page in some bound copies of the book is also dated ‘1892’; but other copies of the title-page are dated ‘1894’. The book was in fact issued in instalments over these years. Freud enclosed one instalment (probably the first) in a letter to Fliess dated June 28, 1892, with this comment: ‘The instalment of Charcot which I send you to-day is on the whole successful; but it annoys me, owing to several uncorrected wrong accents and spelling mistakes in the few French words. Slipshod!’1
The method of publication in instalments leads to some inconsistencies in Freud's footnotes. For instance, there are two references in them to his paper on the distinction between organic and hysterical paralyses (1893c, included in the present volume, below, p. 157), one before (see p. 140 below) and one after (p. 141) the paper's publication, which in fact took place late in July, 1893. Similarly, there are two references to the Breuer and Freud theory of hysteria, one almost certainly before (see p. 138) and one after (p. 141) the publication of the ‘Preliminary Communication’ (1893a), which occurred at the beginning of January, 1893. The earlier of these hints at the theory of catharsis may possibly be its very first publication;2