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It is an ambitious title the seven psychoanalysts from Stockholm have given their presentations and new interpretations of Freud's famous and canonized case stories. On Freud's divan immediately makes one's thoughts wander back in time, to the analytical work, which gradually fook form and developed on the Freudian couch. However, at the very moment the thought is born, it is met with sceptical objections, claiming that we are running straight into a number of problems which Freud's case stories have presented to the analysts of today.
First and foremost, these problems concern the scientific and empirical validity of the case stories and thus their utility for scientific and educational purposes. In short, we will probably never know for certain what happened on Freud's couch. Freud himself made it clear that his case stories were more like short stories than scientific reports and many have emphasized the rhetorical and narrative value in Freud's casuistics rather than their scientific value.
Despite the many objections made against Freud's casuistical method, it is obvious that re-readings of the case stories are often the most thought provoking and innovative contributions to the ongoing Freud studies. On Freud's Divan is no exception. It is exciting reading, which in a more than banal significance of the word throws new light on Freud's “fantastic stories”.
The different contributions confirm the assumption that a fruitful, and to psychoanalytical thought, innovative and undogmatic development, presupposes that the interpreter realizes that any reading of these almost