Sigmund Freud and Lou Andreas-Salomae, Letters (Paperback)

Edited by Ernst Pfeiffer and Translated by William and Elaine Robson-Scott

Lou Andreas-Salomé (1861–1937) was a writer and disciple of Freud who became a practicing analyst. For over two decades she and Freud kept up an intensive correspondence. Freud found in her a perceptive appreciater and amplifier of his ideas, and Andreas found him a sympathetic critic of her own. Their exchanges on theoretical topics and clinical experiences, their admiring friendship, and the glimpses of their personalities make this collection invaluable for readers interested in the history of psychoanalysis.

Lou Andreas-Salomé wrote her first letter to Freud in 1912, asking his permission to come to Vienna for psychoanalytical training. This extraordinary Russian woman, whose intelligence and beauty captivated Nietzsche and Rilke, now capitvated Freud, while she discovered in Freud's psychoanalysis the true fulfillment of her life.

Freud's letters contain revealing commentaries on his working methods, his concept of narcissism, and his interpretation of Moses, and they treat the themes that preoccupied him in his old age: death, religion, war. Andreas's topics include her relationship to Rilke, and her reaction to his death, and the psychology of the artist.