Three Contributions to the Theory of Sex

What it is

This is Sigmund Freud's text on sexual theory, first published in German and later translated into English by A. A. Brill with an introduction by James J. Putnam. The edition shown is a 1920 reprinting, part of a series of monographs on nervous and mental disease.

Why it matters

This work laid out Freud's ideas about child development and sexuality, which became some of his most controversial and influential claims. Its translation into English, with support from American doctors like Brill and Putnam, shows how psychoanalysis spread beyond Vienna into the English-speaking medical world.

Look closer

• Why might Freud's ideas about childhood and sexuality have been controversial when first published?
• What does the involvement of an American translator and introduction writer suggest about how psychoanalysis traveled across countries?
• What questions might you ask about a scientific theory written over a hundred years ago that are different from questions you'd ask about new science today?