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Kurt Eissler holds a unique position in psychoanalysis. Since the 1940s, he has worked unremittingly to get hold of documents which may throw light on Freud and on psychoanalysis. His position as chief of the Freud-Archives gave him considerable power. Moreover, his books and articles seem to lie a considerable cut above the usual level of current psychoanalysis. Eissler seems to maintain his own high standards in these times of general decline. He will not, for example, submit to current demands for more compact formats; his two-volume work, in which he undertakes a psychoanalytic study of Goethe, contains 1538 pages. Eissler is also known as a faithful advocate of Freud.
In recent years, he has been defender of Freud against contemporary descriptions published, for example, by Henri Ellenberger (1970), Paul Roazen (1969, 1975) and Jeffrey Masson (1984) (Eissler, 1971, 1974, 1993). Eissler first became really well-known in the public mind in the mid-1980s, as a result of his controversy with Jeffrey Masson regarding the Freud-Archives and the seduction theory. This quarrel was documented in two masterly articles by Janet Malcolm in The New Yorker (1983a, 1983b), making both combatants famous. All these facts make it likely that a book written by Eissler will naturally arouse the interest of the psychoanalytic community.
The book under consideration consists of three essays, two of them being augmented and revised versions of earlier publications in German. The common theme of the articles is injustice, though very different forms of injustice. The injustices described here give impetus to speculations and reflections.
The first essay, which is also the longest in the book, deals with a tragic child custody case in America. The case received a great deal of public attention in the USA, also because one of the parties, Elisabeth Morgan, was a well-known public figure and a career woman. She was one of America's leading plastic surgeons, the author of four books, one of