During the past summer, on the occasion of the 25th anniversary of the National Mental Health Act, members of the American Psychoanalytic Association began to receive copies of a paperback publication entitled “Abstracts of the Standard Edition of Freud.” This publication was the result of a long collaborative effort between the National Clearinghouse for Mental Health Information (NCMHI) (a division of the NIMH) and the American Psychoanalytic Association.
The Abstracts have been widely praised as a unique undertaking which will prove valuable to workers in all of the behavioral sciences. Dr. Bernard D. Fine, Chairman of the Committee on Indexing of the APsaA played a central role in the production of the Abstracts, and the following account of the development of the project is based on an interview with him.
In 1967, at the time when Dr. Fine became Chairman of the Committee on Indexing, the NCMHI (under the direction of its then Chief, Dr. David Swenson, a psychiatrist) was beginning a mammoth computer project which involved the abstracting of every behavioral science publication in the world.
The Indexing Committee learned of this project, and Dr. Fine approached Dr. Swenson to express interest. Dr. Swenson, for his part, had been impressed with the enormously successful Psychoanalytic Glossary
(co-authored by Dr. Fine and Dr. Burness Moore). As a result of these contacts, Dr. Swenson received from Dr. Fine's Committee a list of 1200 analytic terms, defined and indexed, and these were fed into a computer for ready retrieval.
The directive creating the abstracting project had specified that only publications appearing after 1968 should be abstracted. Recognizing the unique significance of Freud's work, Dr. Swenson succeeded in having the Standard Edition included nonetheless.
The entire work was broken down into small units and sent to an abstracting service. Since these abstractors were not psychoanalysts the matter of quality control was left to Dr. Fine and his colleagues. Dr. Fine was impressed with the skill of the abstractors in capturing the essence of the sections they had delineated.
In order to accomplish the huge task of checking the abstracts, Dr. Fine enlisted the help of members and candidates from the Downstate and New York Psychoanalytic Institutes. Those who participated in this portion of the project were: Drs. Marvin Nierenberg, S. Warren Seides, and Martin Silverman of Downstate; and Drs. Gerald Epstein, Yale Kramer, Zvi Lothane, James Spencer and Israel Zeifman of New York; they reviewed nine volumes. The remaining 14 volumes were reviewed by Dr. Fine and his wife, Mrs. Bernice Fine.
Following this, the corrected abstracts were returned to the NCMHI. Not all of the revisions were used owing to budget cuts but all are on file and will undoubtedly be included in any future editions.
Dr. George H. Klumpner, Coordinator, Chicago Psychoanalytic Indexing Research Group, prepared the cross-references from the Tyson-Strachey numbers to The Standard Edition and assisted in the preparation of the KWOC index. It was through Dr. Fine's good offices that the NIMH sent each member of the APsaA a copy of the Abstracts as a gift.
With the Freud Abstracts completed, Dr. Fine is now involved in a similar, and equally enormous project: abstracting the 25 volumes of the annual, “Psychoanalytic Study of the Child.” Along with Dr. Burton Wixen, he is engaged in delineating the units to be abstracted. Dr. Carrie Lee Rothgeb of the NCMHI, who was Editor of the Freud Abstracts, is also involved in the work on the Study of the Child. Dr. Fine has noted that one of the added benefits of the new project will be the creation of an index for this annual, which has none.
The Freud Abstracts can be obtained from the Government Printing Office, Washington, D. C. 20404, Stock Number 1724-0139, for $1.75.