Vorlesungen zur Einfuhrung in die Psychoanalyse

Leipzig: Internationaler Psychoanlytischer Verlag, 1922. SECOND REVISED EDITION. Publisher’s cloth, author and title in gilt on cover and spine, front cover a bit worn on the bottom. Presentation copy from Freud to George Sylvester Viereck (see provenance below), his signature and annotation on the fly-leaf and with the bookplates of Viereck and Otto Orren Fisher on the paste-down. Second revised edition of one of Freud’s most popular works, his lectures on the introduction to psychoanalysis. The twenty-eight lectures are grouped into three parts, including the unconscious where he discusses Freudian slips, dreams and the theory of neuroses. Freud intended this to be a simple and straight-forward discussion of his work for the “lay multitude.” It was first printed in three separate parts between 1916 to 1917.

Provenance: Viereck (1884-1962) was a German-American poet, writer, and pro-German propagandist. His mother was born in America and married her first cousin (his father). He began writing as early as 11 years old and published several works before returning to Germany before World War I where he edited a German-sponsored weekly magazine. In 1923, Viereck published a popular-science book entitled Rejuvenation: How Steinach Makes People Young, which drew the attention of Freud, who apparently wrote Viereck asking if he would write a similar book about psychoanalysis. Viereck traveled to Vienna to interview Freud, and then went to Munich to interview Adolf Hitler. He ultimately worked for the Nazi party writing propaganda during the war. Dr. Otto Orren Fisher (1881-1961), a Detroit doctor, was a renowned book and manuscript collector who at his death had assembled a collection of some 20,000 items in many subjects.