The foundation of psychoanalysis

FREUD, Sigmund.

Die Traumdeutung.

Leipzig and Vienna: Franz Deuticke, 1900.

1st Edition. Hardcover. Near Fine. Item #002662

8vo (224 x 142 mm). [4], 371, [5] pp. Contemporary cloth-backed marbled boards, spine lettered and ruled in gilt with single floral motif (rubbed, slight edge wear and fraying at head of joints). Text only very little age-toned, otherwise clean and crisp. Provenance: Johannes Thiele (somewhat faded ink ownership signature 'Dr. med. Joh's. Thiele, 14.XI.99' to upper margin of title-page and his purple ink name stamp to front free endpaper); Spiering (inscribed 'E. 8.I. 1900 (Spiering, Berlin)' to upper margin of front pastedown; Eduardo Krapf*. A fine copy in an untouched contemporary binding. ----

PMM 389; Norman F33; Horblit 32; Grolier/Medicine 87; Heirs of Hippocrates 2176; Garrison-M. 4980. - First edition of The Interpretation of Dreams, Freud's greatest single work and the foundation of psychoanalysis. Freud's first major work on psychology, Die Traumdeutung contains "all the basic components of psychoanalytic theory and practice" (PMM): displacement, regression, the libido, Oedipal impulses and the erotic nature of dreams. "Freud gave an unprecedented precision and force to the idea of the essential similarities of normal and abnormal behaviour, opening up the door to the irrational that had been closed to Western pychology since the time of Locke" (Norman). Freud has been ranked 'with Charles Darwin and Karl Marx as one of the three great revolutionary thinkers of the nineteenth century' (pace I. Bernhard Cohen, cf. Grolier Medicine). Freud's biographer and colleague Ernest Jones recorded that the manuscript of Die Traumdeutung was finished by 11 September 1899. Freud sent a copy to his close associate Wihelm Fleiss which was inscribed with the date 24 October 1899 (cf. Norman F33, Fleiss' copy). According to Jones, the work was "actually published on November 4, 1899, but the publisher chose to put the date 1900 on the title page" (Sigmund Freud: Life and Work, London, 1956-1957), I, p. 395). The first edition was of 600 copies, and as Eimas notes, the book "is now quite scarce". Initially, the work went virtually unnoticed. Jones notes that eighteen months after publication, "no scientific periodical, and only a few others, had mentioned the book. It was simply ignored [...] Seldon has an important book produced no echo whatever. It was ten years later, when Freud's work was coming to be recognized, that a second edition was called for" (Jones op. cit., pp. 395-396).
*Eduardo Krapf (1901-1963), German-born Argentinian Jewish psychiatrist who fled Adolf Hitler's Germany and became the first president of the Sociedad interamericana de psychologia and the head of the Mental Health Division in the World Health Organisation.

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