WHY HISTORY?<br > Freud the monument of literature， not really Freud the man;<br >and above all， the Freud of this particular writer s - D.M. s -<br >imagination. This， of course， immediately presents itself as the<br >most futile purpose of all， since D.M. never knew Freud.<br >Would it not be better for him to present his personal Melanie<br >Klein， or himself?. Well， the latter would not do because no<br >case could be made out for his being a key figure in psycho-<br >analytic history. Why not Melanie Klein then? Well， for a<br >perfectly good reason: relative lack of documentation. Consider，<br >[ or instance， what you would do if you wanted to write the<br >history of 13th Century manorial life; you would not necessarily<br >tetermine which was the biggest， most powerful， most success-<br >hi， most beautiful or most anything-else manor， to study its<br >nanorial roils. You would first determine which manorial<br >oils were the most completely preserved and select your manor<br >ccordingly. If this turned out to be the biggest， richest， etc.，<br >: would be only slightly wlde of coincidental. Similarly， the<br >ocumcntation ，of Freud s scientific development is certainly<br >0t a function of his having been in every way superlative， but<br > his having been a compulsive writer. You must consider:<br >venty-three volumes of some foul. hundred pages each; say<br >)out nine thousand pages in forty-odd years. That comes to a<br >~ok<br > of over two hundred pages every year; twent a<br >a pages each! In addition， by his hand， we hav~YtP~P~[~er~:<br > F/less， the Project for a Scientific Psychology， letters to<br >)raham，<br > and probably many more unpublished papers case<br >x~rts， et% all guarded in the archives by the jealous dragon<br > ~ Kurt Eissler. No， tile most cogent reason for studying<br >[hi~ is that he has left us a documentation ofhls thought and<br >912<br >lerlence that is unparalleled.<br >3an we not， then， just forget that we are studying a man s<br >and Works and concentrate on tile material， the data， the<br > t.od， the ideas? Suppose it were Newton; we would not， in<br > zing the evolution of his work in mathematics， optics， etc.，<br >~ern ourselves with his rather mad theological ramblings<br >more than we would with his sexual life. Indeed， we could<br >Ire :that aspect of Newton because his writings in theology<br >quite Separate from ltis works in mathematms and physics.<br >h Freud however， as with the 13th Century manorial<br > .ct and fancy， truth and distortion， new experiences<br > 5<br >