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Sigmund Freud was a diligent letter writer, and a number of extensive correspondences from him have already been published. These include his correspondence with Sándor Fenrenczi, Oskar Pfister, Carl Gustav Jung, Lou Andreas-Salomé, Karl Abraham, and his daughter, Anna Freud. Psychoanalyta, psychiatrist and former staff member at the Psychiatric Clinic of the University of Nijmegen, Gertie F. Bögels, has published the correspondence between Sigmund Freud and Jeanne Lampl-de Groot. The correspondence consists of more than 70 letters penned by Freud. Unfortunately, the letters written by Lampl-de-Groot have not been preserved: they were allegedly destroyed at her request by Anna Freud. The core of Bögels’ book comprises the preserved, numbered and carefully annotated letters and postcards which Freud sent to Lampl-de Groot and which cover a period of 18 years, from 1921 to 1939. As editor, Bögels was not content with only publishing this compilation; therefore, the book consists of three parts, which allows for a more detailed depiction of Jeanne Lampl-de Groot. The first part of the book is an extensive introduction, in which her life story is presented. Bögels succeeds in producing a concise yet dense description of her family origin, which is described as ‘cosmopolitan’ and ‘humanistically oriented’. It becomes apparent that Lampl-de Groot suffered profound losses early in life: the unexpected death of her younger sister, while her mother developed severe depression after the death of the youngest sister. Jeanne Lampl-de Groot was six years old at the time and it appears that she had to cope with these experiences throughout her life. Several years later, her older sister also died.
Bögels presents the reader with an in-depth picture of Lampl-de-Groot’s neurological-psychiatric education and her approach to and dealing with psychoanalysis. At the same time, she also portrays the general social and political conditions in Vienna, when Lampl-de-Groot began her psychoa