‘Freud the writer is what Joan Riviere so elegantly presents to the English-Language reader’
Lisa Appignanesi from her preface to Sigmund Freud: Essays and Papers
This collection focuses in on the set of Riviere’s translations that made up the first library of Freud in English. Including his papers on metapsychology, applied psychoanalysis and technique, and within those broader categories are subjects as diverse as narcissism, love, paranoia and homosexuality. Riviere’s great understanding of Freud’s work is evident as we see his engrossingly direct arguments – the style that distinguished him from academics of his day – take shape in her talented translations. We are presented with Freud’s various guises, both an essayist and master storyteller he brings to life the vagaries of his patients.
Riviere was a major player in disseminating psychoanalysis into English, ‘no less than the man she translated is she a figure to be hidden from history’, in this collection the translator and the scientist come together in a rich, engrossing brew.
