Über Frauenemancipation. Plato. Arbeiterfrage. Socialismus. Von John Stuart Mill. Übersetzt von Sigmund Freud. Leipzig: Fues’s Verlag (R. Reisland), 1880.
This is the only work Freud published that was not connected with scientific research. It is a German translation of John Stuart Mill’s Works, vol. 12, containing essays on the emancipation of women, Plato, labor, and socialism. The volume was edited by Theodor Goupers, about whom Freud later recalled, “I heard from him (Goupers) the first remarks about the role played by dreams in the psychic life of primitive men – something that has preoccupied me so intensively ever since.”
This exceedingly rare piece was the gift of Dr. Robert M. Stecher.
Zur Auffassung der Aphasien. Eine Kritische Studie von Dr. Sigm. Freud. Leipzig und Wien: Franz Deuticke, 1891.
This is Freud’s first book. Here he criticizes the findings on aphasia of Carl Wernicke (1848-1905) and Ludwig Lichtheim (1845-1928). Eight hundred fifty copies were printed; two hundred fifty-seven were sold. After nine years all remaining copies were pulped. As a result, it has become one of the rarest books in Freudian literature.
This copy was the gift of Dr. Robert M. Stecher. It was formerly in the library of Dr. S. Fries.
Autograph letter from Sigmund Freud, dated New Year’s Day, 1894.
This letter gives a hint of Freud’s struggle and optimism as he and others developed what was later, in 1896, termed “psychoanalysis.”
“We shall not be shipwrecked. Instead of the passage we are seeking, we may find oceans, to be fully explored by those who come after us; but, if we are not prematurely capsized, if our constitution can stand it, we shall succeed. Nous y arriverons. No previous New Year has been so rich with promise. I am not afraid to take on all the devils in hell. Sigm.”
This letter is from the Hanna Perkins Center collections
Die Traumdeutung (The Interpretation of Dreams) von Dr. Sigm. Freud. Leipzig und Wien: Franz Deuticke, 1900.
This famous work was actually issued on November 4, 1899, but the publisher chose to put 1900 on the title-page. Freud’s royalties for this seminal work amounted to only $209.00. Six hundred copies were printed, and it took eight years to sell them all. In 1912, an authorized English translation by the American A. A. Brill was published in New York 1912 by the Macmillan Company.
This first edition is considered one of the treasures of the collection and was donated by Dr. Robert M. Stecher.
This portrait of Freud was done by Hermann Struck in 1914. Upon its completion, Freud wrote to the artist, “The etching strikes me as a charming idealization. This is how I should like to look… everything that is shaggy and angular about me you have made smooth and rounded… My relations with the lithograph are less friendly. Whatever is Jewish about the head has my full agreement, but something else has struck me as alien. I have come to the conclusion that it is the exaggerated opening of the mouth, the stretching forward of the beard and the prominence of its outer contour. In trying to remember where these features could come from, I remembered the beautiful, malicious orchid, the Orchibestia Karbadiensis, which we shared. This could produce a hybrid phenomenon (as it is called in The Interpretation of Dreams) of Jew and orchid.”
Signed by the artist and by Freud.
Gift of Dr. David Crocker.
Sigmund Freud, etching, 1914. Max Pollak (1886-1970), Vienna.
Pollak presents Freud at his desk showing the antiquities he studied in an effort to relate the past to the problems of his patients. Most of Pollak’s work was confiscated by the Nazis in 1938, but he was able to bring a few items to the United States where he spent the remainder of his life.
Gift of Dr. Robert M. Stecher.
Vorlesungen zur Einführung in die Psychoanalyse von Prof. Sigm. Freud. Leipzig und Wien: Hugo Heller and Cie, 1916-1917.
The Introductory Lectures on Psychoanalysis proved to be Freud’s most popular work. Developed from lectures originally given at the Berlin Psychoanalytic Institute, the book sold over 50,000 copies.
This is a particularly fine first edition in its original paper covers bearing the inscription “Herrn Dr. J. MacCurdy. D. Verf. 27-11-16.” (To Dr. J. MacCurdy. From the author. 27-11-16).”
Psychopathology of Everyday Life by Prof. Dr. Sigmund Freud, LL.D. Authorized English edition with introduction by A. A. Brill, Ph. D., M.D. New York: The Macmillan Co., 1917.
A translation of Freud’s Zur Psychopathologie des Alltagslerens (1904) which discusses the interference of the unconscious upon conscious functioning.
Ten editions were published during Freud’s lifetime, the last of which was four times the size of the original work.
This book originally belonged to Patricia C. Raymond, Royal Victoria Hospital, Montreal, Quebec.
Jesseits des Lustprinzips von Sigm. Freud. Leipzig, Wien, Zurich,: Internationaler Psychoanalytischer Verlag, 1920.
This metapsychological work is regarded as the introduction to the final phase of Freud’s thought. In it Freud analyzes the differences between Eros and Death and discusses destructiveness, repetition, and transference.
The second edition was translated into English by C. J. N. Hubback as Beyond the Pleasure Principle.
Das Ich und das Es von Sigm. Freud, Leipzig, Wien, Zurich: Internationaler Psychoanalytischer Verlag, 1923.
This is Freud’s last major theoretical work in which he describes the threefold division of the mind and the genesis of the superego.
Gift of Dr. Robert M. Stecher. It bears the bookplate of Dr. Harry J. Benjamin.
Zur Geschichte der Psychoanalytisches Bewegung. Von Prof. Dr. Sigmund Freud. Leipzig, Wien, Zurich: Internationaler Psychoanalytischer Verlag, 1924.
Written in 1914, the study first appeared in the journal Jahrbuch der Psychoanalyse, Band VI, and later that year in Sammlung Kleiner Schriften zur Neurosenlehre. This is its first appearance in a separate edition.
According to James Strachey, “Freud’s immediate aim was to state as clearly as possible the fundamental postulates and hypotheses of psycho-analysis, to show that the theories of Adler and Jung were totally incompatible with them, and to draw the inference that it would lead to nothing but general confusion if this contradictory set of views were all given the same name.” Jung responded to Freud’s criticism by withdrawing (along with the entire Zurich group) from the International Association.
Holograph letter dated August 8, 1938 to a colleague who was emigrating to the United States.
“You don’t need my introductions in New York, as you already know so many pupils and colleagues there. I naturally know only analysts, and I am at present fallen out with most of them, these so-called pupils of mine, as I have to reproach them for many a thing. I have there only one friend, Dr. A. A. Brill, and if you want to call on him and give him my regards, it’s all right with me.”
Gift of the Cleveland Psychoanalytic Institute (now Cleveland Psychoanalytic Center).
Der Mann Moses und die Monotheistische Religion von Sigmund Freud. Amsterdam: Alert DeLange, 1939.
Freud’s last book, published in the year of his death, examines the origin of the Jewish (and to some extent the Christian) religion. Also included is a discussion of the significance of religion in general.
This rare first edition was a gift of the Cleveland Psychoanalytic Institute (now Cleveland Psychoanalytic Center).
Freud died September 3, 1939. His ashes, together with those of his wife, Martha, were placed in a Grecian urn from Freud’s collection of antiquities. It is now in the crematorium at Golden Green, London.
