In the Freud Archives (New York Review Books Classics) - Explore Sigmund Freud's Legacy for Psychology Enthusiasts & History Readers

This reviewer being a PhD psychologist: Ms. Malcolm covers all the major players in psychoanalysis at the time, and does a splendid job. If Kurt Eissler, as trustee of the Freud Archives, can be faulted, it is due to his establishing an "idealizing transference" to Jeffrey Masson, much as Freud did to Fliess, being blindsided to the quite evident psychopatholgy of all the concerned parties she mentions in the book. Interestingly, nothing is said of Heinz Kohut, the former president of the American Psychoanalytic Association, who when he treated a Holocaust survivor for post-traumatic stress syndrome, all he could focus on was the unrecovered Oedipal strivings of the patient, and not of the unresolved trauma andintrusive thoughts of being a Holocaust survivor, reminiscent of Freud's abandonment of seduction theory for intrapsychic conflict. I do not wish to openly discuss Masson's diagnosis (nor Peter Swales) in a public forum, due to the similarities of both individual's character structure and litigious natures. Both men are brilliant, but where are they today?It always struck me that if a lawsuit were brought against the Library of Congress as well as the Freud Archives for restricting access to Freud's letters, such as the Martha Bernays letters which even Peter Gay couldn't look at, that the plaintiff would win. Public monies (taxpayer funds) are being used to store and conserve the letters, so the trustees, such as Harold Blum, shouldn't have the final say as to who sees what, along as the person wishing to view the materials is a valid scholar.