James Strachey - Psychoanalytic Writings

Psychoanalytic Writings

Strachey published three articles in the International Journal of Psychoanalysis between 1930 and 1935. In the first, on "Some Unconscious Factors in Reading", he explored the 'oral ambitions... "taking in" words, by hearing or reading, both unconsciously meaning "eating"' - something of central significance 'for reading addictions as well as for neurotic disturbances of reading'.

In his 1931 article on the "Precipitating Factor in the Etiology of the Neuroses", Strachey examined those 'experiences that disturb the equilibrium between warded-of impulses and warding-off forces, an equilibrium hitherto relatively stable'.

His most important contribution, however, was that of 1934 on "The Nature of the Therapeutic Action of Psychoanalysis"- a seminal article arguing that 'the fact that the pathogenic conflicts, revived in the transference, are now experienced in their full emotional content makes the transference interpretation so much more effective than any other interpretation'. Half a century later, the role of 'mutative transference interpretations as described by Strachey (1934)' was still serving as a starting-point for discussion.

His 1962 "Sketch" of Freud's life and work, which serves as an introduction to the Penguin Freud Library, is a genial but wide-ranging survey - grounded in his intimate knowledge of the Freudian corpus, but perhaps with somewhat of the spirit he himself observed in Martin Freud's memoir of his father, Glory Reflected: 'this delightful and amusing book serves to redress the balance from more official biographies...and reveals something of Freud as he was in ordinary life'.