Sigmund Freud and Lou Andreas-Salomé: Letters

By Sigmund Freud and Lou Andreas-Salomé
Edited by Ernst Pfeiffer
Translated by William Robson-Scott 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 appreciator and amplifier of his ideas, and Frau 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 makes 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 captivated 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 conception of narcissism, and his interpretation of Moses, and they treat the themes that preoccupied him in old age: death, religion, war. Frau Andreas's topics include her relationship to Rilke, and her reaction to his death, and the psychology of the artist. 

The book includes an introduction and notes by Ernst Pfeiffer, Lou Andreas-Salomé's literary executor. 

Paperback
264 pages
W. W. Norton & Company, 1985
5.3 x 0.6 x 7.8 inches
ISBN 9780393302615
Biography, Psychology