Footnotes

'THE DEVELOPMENT, CONTENTS AND ACHIEVEMENTS OF ΨA FROM THE VERY BEGINNING': Sigmund Freud's contribution to the Encyclopaedia Britannica.

The first stand-alone entry on the subject of psychoanalysis appeared in the thirteenth edition of the Encyclopaedia Britannica, published in three volumes (nos. 29, 30 and 31) in 1926 and written, as seen here, by Freud himself: 'He described the subject as he understood it at that time but also as he wished it to be understood later. "The future will probably attribute far greater importance to psychoanalysis as the science of the unconscious... than as a therapeutic procedure." Freud also chafed at what he seemed to think was the two-small space allotted to his article... a remarkably clear expression of psychoanalytic theory interlaced with Freud's reflections upon his own scientific legacy' (Britannica.com).

In our letter he refers the recipient, most probably the newly appointed editor-in-chief (and long-standing editor of The Observer) J. L. Garvin (1868-1947), to his friend, colleague and biographer Ernest Jones and his English translator James Strachey, brother of Lytton, for assistance in making his article more comprehensible. The lack of date and several amendments and deletions would perhaps indicate that this is a draft of a letter which appears to be unpublished. Freud's use of the Greek letter Ψ (psi) to abbreviate the word 'psychoanalysis' and the abbreviation of Encyclopaedia Britannica to 'E. Br' or 'E. B.' would also bear this out.

Freud spoke highly of Garvin in a letter to Franklin Hooper, the American editor of the Encyclopaedia in September 1924 following the publication of Hooper's These Eventful Years, writing in a similar vein to our letter: 'My complete admiration goes to the introductory essay by Garvin... I am very proud that you have granted psychoanalysis a chapter to itself. I hope that the future will justify your assessment. If my essay has turned out longer than you wished it to be, my excuse is that a shorter description of the difficult topic would have offered nothing comprehensible to the reader' (ed. Freud, Ernst, Letters of Sigmund Freud 1873-1939, 1961).

Garvin was keen to maintain the encyclopaedia's closely-held reputation for scholarship and saw the publication as an opportunity to restore international unity through intellectual cooperation, whilst in turn making it more cosmopolitan and accessible. With that in mind he commissioned the best possible authority on each subject, as shown here. Other illustrious contributors to the edition included Marie Curie writing on Radium, Albert Einstein on Space-Time, Henry Ford on Mass Production, Suzanne Lenglen on Lawn Tennis, Andrew Mellon on Finance, Marconi on Wireless, Nansen on Polar Exploration and Leon Trotsky on Lenin.