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(a) German Edition:
1950 In Aus den Anfängen der Psychoanalyse [From the Beginnings of Psycho-Analysis], edited by Marie Bonaparte, Anna Freud and Ernst Kris, 371-466. London: Imago Publishing Co.
(b) English Translation:
[Project for a Scientific Psychology]
1954 In The Origins of Psycho-Analysis, edited as above, 347-445. London: Imago Publishing Co.; New York: Basic Books. (Tr. James Strachey.)
The present translation, also by James Strachey, is a completely revised one, edited in accordance with the original manuscript. The German title (‘Sketch of a Psychology’) was chosen by the editors of the Anfänge; the English title was chosen by the translator. The original carries no title.
In a letter written to Wilhelm Fliess1 on April 27,1895 (Freud, 1950a, Letter 23), Freud complained because he was so much involved in his ‘Psychology for Neurologists’. ‘I am positively devoured by it, till I am really overworked and have to break off. I have never experienced such a powerful preoccupation. And will anything come of it? I hope so, but it is a difficult and slow business.’ In another letter a month later, May 25, 1895 (Letter 24), this ‘Psychology’ was further explained: ‘It has beckoned to me from afar since time immemorial, but now that I have met with the neuroses it has come that much the nearer. I am vexed by two intentions: to discover what form the theory of psychical functioning will take if a quantitative line of approach, a kind of economics of nervous force, is introduced into it, and, secondly, to extract from psychopathology a yield for normal psychology. It is in fact impossible to form a satisfactory general view of neuro-psychotic disorders unless they
can be linked to clear hypotheses upon normal psychical process