General Preface

The ground covered by this edition is shown by its title—The Complete Psychological Works of Sigmund Freud; but it is right that I should begin by indicating its contents more explicitly. My aim has been to include in it the whole of Freud's published psychological writings—that is, both the psycho-analytic and the pre-psycho-analytic. It does not include Freud's numerous publications on the physical sciences during the first fifteen years or so of his productive activity.1 I have been fairly liberal in drawing the line here, for I have found a place for two or three works produced by Freud immediately after his return from Paris in 1886. These, dealing chiefly with hysteria, were written under the influence of Charcot, with scarcely a reference to mental processes; but they provide a real bridge between Freud's neurological and psychological writings.

The Standard Edition does not include Freud's correspondence. This is of enormous extent and only relatively small selections from it have been published hitherto. Apart from ‘Open Letters’ and a few others printed with Freud's assent during his lifetime, my main exception to this general rule is in the case of his correspondence with Wilhelm Fliess during the early part of his career. This is of such vital importance to an understanding of Freud's views (and not only of his early ones) that much of it could not possibly be rejected. The first volume of the edition accordingly contains the Project of 1895 and the series of ‘Drafts’ sent by Freud to Fliess between 1892 and 1897, as well as such portions of the letters themselves as are of definite scientific interest.

Nor, again, does the Standard Edition contain any reports or abstracts, published in contemporary periodicals, of the many lectures and papers given by Freud in early days at meetings of various medical societies in Vienna. The only exceptions here are the rare cases in which the report was made or revised by Freud himse