Introduction

Corliss begins by describing the complex history of Silberer’s text: presented as a series of lectures in Vienna in 1918; published in German the following year; clearly not welcomed by the mainstream Freudian community of the time, and consequently, left to languish for 36 years before it was translated into English, and then only partially so. Corliss then overviews (largely from his book: A Primer of the Psychoanalytic Theory of Herbert Silberer: What Silberer Said, 2018) the sparse collection of known details about the brief life, promising career, and tragic death of this brilliant theorist.