June 2021 Catalogue

M e d i c i n e 55 Wonderfully Inscribed By Freud To His Colleague And Friend Rudolf Reitler, The First Practitioner Of Psychoanalysis After Freud 51. FREUD, Sigmund. Vorlesungen zur Einfuhrung in die Psychoanalyse. Leipzig und Wien, 1916-17. Three volumes. Small octavo (4 by 6-1/2 inches), coriginal tan paper wrappers, custom clamshell box. $25,000. Click for more info First edition in original wrappers of all three volumes of one of Freud’s most popular works, the Introductory Lectures on Psychoanalysis, inscribed to Rudolf Reitler, a friend and colleague of Freud who was instrumental in the development of psychoanalysis as a discipline and the first person after Freud himself to perform analysis on patients: “Herr Dr. R. Reitler mit herzlichen Gruss. Verf[asser]” [Dr. R. Reitler with warm regards. The Author]. By 1915, Freud was internationally famous, a respected doctor and a professor at the University in Vienna. In October of that year, “Freud began giving his accustomed lectures on ‘An Introduction to Psychoanalysis.’ He found, evidently to his surprise, an audience of 70, a great contrast to the audience of three when he gave his first lecture on dreams only 15 years before; in the following month it had mounted to over a hundred. So he decided to prepare them more carefully than usual, and after a little reflection made up his mind to publish them in book form. The acute [Otto] Rank at once interpreted this as a plan to make further lectures unnecessary, and he was right. Freud had been lecturing for 30 years… these lectures were his last” (Jones, Life and Work of Sigmund Freud II: 218). Rudolf Reitler, to whom the second volume in this set is inscribed, was a close friend and colleague of Freud. Reitler himself was “the first person to practice psychoanalysis after Freud” (Jones II:7), a fact often acknowledged be Freud. He died unexpected in 1917, onlyoneyear after this inscription.Modest soiling toall volumes, with expert repairs toVolume II. Awonderful inscribed item, with an association linking it to the very beginnings of the psychoanalytic movement.