Corrected galley proofs to ‘Die Frage de Laienanalyse’,

Vienna, , 1926. 45 folio leaves, each approx. 47 x 20 cm, printed on one side only, versos blank. Printed on acidic paper, with some age-toning, and now enclosed in custom-made mylar sleeves and housed in a cloth drop-box. Freud’s pencilled annotations and corrections are more numerous in the first part of the work.Freud’s ‘Question of lay analysis’ is the fullest, most closely argued expression of his strongly-held view that it is not necessary to be medically qualified in order to practise psychoanalysis. It was written in response to charges brought against a non-medical member of the Vienna Psycho-Analytical Society for ‘quackery’ (treating patients without a medical degree) but it sparked a broader professional debate which would continue for over half a century. Freud and almost all his early colleagues were doctors and, regardless of Freud’s own position on the matter, the question of who should be authorised to practise the treatment methods which arose from his discoveries was contentious - sometimes bitterly so. This was especially true in the United States where psychiatrists, and the medical profession generally, wanted to control the practice of psychoanalysis by categorising it as a speciality within medicine, not a freestanding profession in its own right. Freud set up the International Psychoanalytic Association as an overall umbrella body, but the Americans responded by setting up their own independent association, in which only doctors could train to be analysts. The monopoly that Freud was opposed to was finally broken in 1988.Provenance: purchased from John Gach Books of Columbia, Maryland, appearing as item 1a in catalogue 109 (‘Psychoanalysis’, Winter 1987). Gach sold his general secondhand book business in 1981 to concentrate on collections and archives, and specialist subject areas including psychology, psychiatry and psychoanalysis; a December 2009 obituary in the Baltimore Sun describes him as ‘a leading dealer in first editions of Sigmund Freud’. The purchaser of the galley proofs retained the original invoice (August 1987, for the full catalogue price of US$ 8750) and a letter from Gach explaining that ‘we bought the galleys from the Pittsburgh Psychoanalytic Society as part of a large collection of duplicates and other, mostly foreign language, books which they wished to sell. The Galleys… came from the collection of Bert Lewin… Lewin almost certainly got the Galleys directly from Freud… It definitely was he who had them enclosed in mylar and boxed’. Bertram David Lewin (1896-1971) had a distinguished career in the field of psychoanalysis which culminated in tenure as professor of psychoanalysis and psychology at the University of Pittsburgh (1962-1971). His papers are held by the Library of Congress and include an account of meeting the Freud family in 1926, the year in which Freud’s ‘Die Frage de Laienanalyse’ was published. The proofs might have been given to him at the time, if Freud had finished with them. Lewin also maintained a correspondence with Anna Freud between 1936 and 1969, and it is also possible that she was the source.The annotations: The work was written at speed. Strachey notes in his translation that Freud began writing it at the end of June 1926, it was in print before the end of July, and published in September. Given the limited time frame, Freud was meticulous.To give a few examples, on page 7 of the proof (page 24 of the printed text) Freud spotted a circumflex in Damit which he replaced with a dot, and ‘Piktion’ became ‘fiktion’ (a simple typo).On page 8 (25 in the printed work) sowohl was amended to obwahl, changing ‘both’ to ‘instead of’. In this context, it changes the meaning from some people make an assumption ‘as well as being a philosopher’, to ‘in spite of being a philosopher’.On page 9 of the proof (page 30 of the printed text) 'hyparische' is underlined, with a marginal question mark suggesting that Freud himself was confused. In the printed text it has become ‘hypnotische’ as in ‘hypnotic experiments’. At the bottom of page 9 another query leads to another change in meaning. In the proof we have ‘es nicht Sie allein’, implying that it is not only processes in the Ego which can become conscious. In the printed text ‘nicht’, which contradicts what Freud is trying to say, is deleted, leaving ‘Sie allein’, ie those processes only.On page 10, ‘unpolitischen’ had been changed to ‘unpartieschen’, the unpolitical has become impartial (as translated by Strachey) or perhaps nonpartisan.On page 10 of the proof (page 34 of the printed text) Freud had deleted the word ‘nicht’. His imagined interlocutor had expressed concern that he would become confused and Freud replies ‘I hope that you will not be able to find your way around’, clearly the opposite of what was intended. The printer has retained nicht, but restored the sense by following it with a full stop, ie. ‘I hope not. You will soon be able to find your way around’.Page 11 of the proof (page 36 of the printed text) a shift in word order creates a change in emphasis; an accidental repetition is also deleted.Page 13 (proof) and 41 (text) he calls for a comma so that a sentence runs on.From the beginning of part 4 (page 15 of the proof) until the end of the text, there are relatively few corrections, mostly spelling and punctuation. Whether the more egregious errors arose from difficulties which the compositors had in reading or interpreting Freud's hastily written manuscript, or whether Freud genuinely wished to express himself more clearly it is impossible to say, but some of the changes (such as those on pages 9 and 10) are substantive, and the published text would have read differently without them. Book