Note on Transcription of the Original Correspondence, The Correspondence of Sigmund Freud and Sandor Ferenczi, Volume 1

The Transcription of this correspondence was accomplished in several stages. Initially I worked with enlargements of microfilms of the manuscripts (typewritten versions). These reproductions were, however, so full of errors that it proved necessary to verify the texts systematically by referring to the originals preserved in the National Library of Austria, in Vienna. In addition, all the letters have been compared with the rough transcription prepared by Michael Balint in the 1960s. These various documents are discussed in the annotation, at the appropriate points. Passages that remain obscure or fragmentary, despite efforts to clarify them, are likewise pointed out in the notes.

The letters, postcards, telegrams, and notes have been numbered in chronological order. (The corresponding references from the catalogue of the National Library of Austria have been omitted in this edition.) The annotation discusses the physical characteristics of the letters, material that appears in the headings, missing elements, the conjectured dating of undated items, and passages that proved difficult to decipher. Corrections in the originals themselves have been noted only if they were made in a different hand, or could not be clearly deciphered, or are explicitly referred to in the text by the writer of the letter.

In his correspondence Freud almost always used one of two kinds of large-format letterhead which he would reorder from the stationer-engraver according to his needs, keeping the layout and typography essentially constant. It was his habit to write out the date by hand, just above the address. To avoid overscrupulous repetition of the same comment in item after item, a note mentioning this characteristic feature is appended only to his first letter (letter 2); in all the cases that follow, the preprinted line is transcribed without comment. Only the rare instances in which Freud departed from this general model are noted. Ferenczi used letterheads of many different sizes an