An Autobiographical Study. The International Psycho-Analytical Library. Edited by Ernest Jones. No. 26. Authorized Translation by James Strachey.

FREUD, Sigmund.

Published by London: published by Leonard and Virginia Woolf at the Hogarth Press, and the Institute of Psycho-Analysis, 1935

About this Item

First British edition, first impression, in the scarce dust jacket. This edition contains new material by Freud, including alterations to the text, additional footnotes, and a postscript. "Two themes run through these pages: the story of my life and the history of psychoanalysis. They are intimately interwoven" (p. 131). Freud wrote this personal study in 1925, following a commission from Die Medizin der Gegenwart in Selbstdarstellungen, a series which aimed to provide a contemporary survey of the field of medicine through the autobiographies of its leading practitioners. The translator, James Strachey, was the younger brother of Lytton Strachey and a patient of Freud's. "During the first weeks of their analysis Freud asked James and Alix [Strachey] to translate some of his recent works into English, a request which signalled the beginning of one of the most heroic undertakings in the history of psychoanalysis" (ODNB). Strachey's translation was published in New York by Brentano in 1927 and then in this revised edition by the Hogarth Press in 1935. In its postscript, Freud complains that the previous American edition "was injudiciously brought out in the same volume as another essay of mine which gave its title, The Problem of Lay-Analyses, to the whole book and so obscured the present work" (p. 131). Leonard Woolf wrote in his own autobiography, "the greatest pleasure that I got from publishing the Psycho-Analytical Library was the relationship which it established between us and Freud. He was not only a genius, but also, unlike many geniuses, an extraordinarily nice man" (p. 166). Woolmer 367. Leonard Woolf, Downhill All the Way: An Autobiography of the Years 1919-1939, 1967. Octavo. Original green diagonal-grain cloth, spine lettered and ruled in gilt. With dust jacket. Half-tone portrait frontispiece, leaf of publishers' advertisements at rear. Bookseller's ticket of Thompson's, Southend-on-Sea, on rear pastedown. Rubbing to edges, spots and browning to outer leaves; jacket unclipped, spine and edges toned, a couple of small tears, tape repair to spine head and to partial splits of rear flap fold: a very good copy in like jacket.

Seller Inventory # 190564

Bibliographic Details

• Title: An Autobiographical Study. The International Psycho-Analytical Library. Edited by Ernest Jones. No. 26. Authorized Translation by James Strachey.
• Publisher: London: published by Leonard and Virginia Woolf at the Hogarth Press, and the Institute of Psycho-Analysis, 1935
• Edition: 1st Edition