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In 1965, a selection of the letters of Sigmund Freud and Karl Abraham was published by The Hogarth Press and The Institute of Psycho-Analysis under the title, A Psycho-Analytic Dialogue. It was edited by Abraham's daughter Hilda, who also translated her father's letters, and Freud's son Ernst; Freud's letters were translated by Eric Mosbacher.1 Following the letters to Wilhelm Fliess (Freud, 1950a), the correspondence with Oskar Pfister (Freud & Pfister, 1963), and a selection of letters to various correspondents (Freud, 1960a), it was the fourth volume of Freud letters to be published. There followed, before the end of the decade, the exchanges with Lou Andreas-Salomé (Freud & Andreas-Salomé, 1966), with Arnold Zweig (Freud & A. Zweig, 1968), with Georg Groddeck , and with Edoardo Weiss (Freud & Weiss, 1970).
None of these was a complete, unabridged edition: whole letters were left out, and passages that were considered unimportant, repetitive, indiscreet, offensive, or not fit for print for whatever other reason were deleted. Sometimes the place where something had been omitted was marked, sometimes not; in no case was it indicated how many words, phrases, or paragraphs had been omitted. There were occasions when the original wording was changed in order to cover up the omissions. Patients’ names—and in some instances the names of analysts and colleagues—were made anonymous through the use either of their surname initial or of arbitrary letters or combinations of letters; in addition, the various editors did not use the same pseudonyms for the same analysands. The transcriptions of the originals on which these publications were based contained a number of errors, some of which altered or inverted the meaning. The editorial notes, where they existed at all, were sparse and sometimes misleading or wrong. The English translations generally added a further distortion. They often suffered from a poor command either of German—in particular of Freud's