iii

PREFACE

The Editor of this series must feel a special satis-
faction in being able to issue as its Opening volume this
collection of the psycho-analytical writings of Professor
James J. Putnam, the distinguished neurologist of Harvard
University. Professor Putnam, who died in 1918 at the
age of seventy-two, was not only the first American to
interest himself in psycho-analysis, but soon became
its most decided supporter and its most influential
representative in America. In consequence of the established
reputation which he had gained through his activities as
a teacher, as well as through his important work in the
domain of organic nervous disease, and thanks to the
universal respect which his personality enjoyed, he was
able to do perhaps more than anyone for the spread of
psycho-analysis in his own country, and was able to
protect it from aspersions which, on the other side of
the Atlantic no less than this, would inevitably have been
cast upon it. But all such reproaches were bound to be
silenced when a man of Putnam’s lofty ethical standards
and more rectitude had ranged himself among the sup-
porters of the new science and of the therapeutics based
upon it.

The papers here collected into a single volume, which
were written by Putnam between 1909 and the end of
his life, give a good picture of his relations to psycho-
analysis. They show how he was at first occupied in
correeting a provisional judgement which was based on
insufficient knowledge; how he then accepted the essence
of analysis, recognized its capacity for throwing a clear
light upon the origin of human imperfections and failings,

iv

and how he was struclt by the prospect of contributing
towards the improvement of humanity along analytical
lines; how he then became convinced by his own activi-
ties as a physician as to the truth of most of the psycho-
analytical conclusions and postulates, and then in his turn
bare witness to the fact that the physician who makes
use of analysis understands far more about the sufferings
of his patients and can do far more for them than was
possible with the earlier methods of treatment; and
final how he began to extend beyond the limits of
analysis, demanding that as a science it should be linked
on to a particular philosophical system, and that its
practice should be openly associated with a particular
set of ethical doctrines.

So it is not to be wondered at that a mind with
such pre-eminently ethical and philosophical tendencies as
Putnam’s should have desired, after he had plunged deep
into psycho-analysis, to establish the closest relation
between it and the aims which lay nearest his heart. But
his enthusiasm, so admirable in a man of his advanced
age, did not succeed in carrying others along with him.
Younger people remained cooler. It was especially
Ferenczi who expressed the opposite view. The decisive
reason for the rejection of Putnam’s proposals was the doubt
as to which of the countless philosophical systems should be
accepted, since they all seemed to rest on an equally
insecure basis, and since everything had up till then been
sacrificed for the sake of the relative certainty of the
results of psycho-analysis. It seemed more prudent to
wait, and to discover whether a particular attitude towards
life might be forced upon us with all the weight of
necessity by analytical investigation itself.

It is our duty to express our thanks to the author’s
widow, Mrs. Pumami, for her assistance with the manu-
scripts, with the copyright, and with financial support,

v

without all of which the publication of this volume would
have been impossible. No English manuscripts were
forthcoming in the case of the papers numbered VI, VII,
and X. They have been translated into English by
Dr. Katherine Jones from the German text which originated
from Putnam himself.

This volume will keep fresh in analytical circles the
memory of the friend whose loss we so profoundly
deplore. May it be the first of a series of publications
which shall serve the end of furthering the understanding
and application of psycho-analysis among those who speak
the English tongue — an end to which James J. Putnam
dedicated the last ten years of his fruitful life.

Jan. 1921

SIGM. FREUD