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ItemID: #107765
Cost: $3,500.00

Three Contributions to the Sexual Theory

Sigmund Freud

"SECOND ONLY TO THE INTERPRETATION OF DREAMS IN ITS IMPORTANCE TO FREUDIAN THEORY"

FREUD, Sigmund. Three Contributions to the Sexual Theory. New York: Journal of Nervous and Mental Disease, 1910. Octavo, modern green morocco gilt, raised bands, marbled endpapers. $3500.

First edition in English of Freud's essays on infantile sexuality and human psychosexual development. Leading psychoanalytic psychiatrist and American Imago editor George Wilbur's copy, with his contemporary title page owner signature.

Three Essays is "second only to the Interpretation of Dreams in its importance to Freudian theory. The work sets forth Freud's theory of infantile sexuality and psychosexual development, in which he postulated the existence of infantile erogenous zones, stated that an infant's first sexual objects are its parents, and described the four stages of human sexual development: oral, anal, phallic and genital. That infants and children experience sexual feelings had long been observed by parents and nursemaids, yet the analysis of this delicate subject in a scientific treatise centered Freud in a storm of criticism that has not yet fully abated" (Norman F55). The essays include "The Sexual Aberrations," "Infantile Sexuality," and "The Transformations of Puberty." First published in German in 1905; this authorized translation is by A.A. Brill, one of the pioneers in introducing Freud to America. Published as the seventh item in the Nervous and Mental Disease Monograph series. Grinstein 79. The copy of George Wilbur, with his contemporary title page owner signature. Wilbur was a prominent Harvard-trained psychoanalytic psychiatrist and a follower of Freud. He saw Otto Rank as a patient and is frequently associated with him. He was the editor (after Hanns Sachs' death) of American Imago, the leading scholarly journal on psychoanalysis founded by Sigmund Freud in collaboration with Viennese analysts Otto Rank and Hanns Sachs. Accordingly, he was also regarded as a reliable source of information on the trio as well as on the reception of psychoanalysis in the Boston area and greater Massachusetts. Marginal handwritten annotations questioning and clarifying the text in at least two unidentified hands.

Faint pinpoint foxing and marginal dampstaining to interior. An extremely good copy with a fascinating provenance.

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