ABSTRACT
The extant material, however, would have permitted to print a factual exchange of letters, all the more so, in that Pfister’s own stipulation when handing over Freud’s letters to Anna Freud was just “that nothing should be published that might give offence to any living person”. The editors tried to take the edge off the whole story, in printing conciliatory remarks of Freud and Abraham rather than acerbic ones, in omitting the more hostile remarks against each other and about third persons, and in cutting indiscretions. The Freud Archives have somewhat loosened their restrictions, in granting confidential access to patients’ names for editors of Freud’s correspondence. Wilhelm Reich and his status as a psychoanalyst might be sensitive subjects; but instead of letting the reader have examples of Freud’s changing attitude towards Reich, references to him are omitted altogether in the edition of the Freud/Pfister letters.
