Written by the curators of the Freud Museum, 20 Maresfield Gardens offers its readers a well illustrated (in black and white) and informative tour through the complex history of psychoanalysis. Beginning with Freud's arrival in London in June 1938 and concluding with an overview of his life and work, the majority of the book is devoted to the Museum's "Rooms" and collections: the hall way, the Anna Freud room, the study, the library.

The reader moves from room to room, from anecdote to insight, as 20 Maresfield Gardens uses the many and various artefacts on display in the Museum--Krüger's engraving of Moses with the Tablets of the Law, for example; Yoshida's "Mount Fuji"; Freud's Goethe collection; the famous couch; the portraits of Charcot--to weave a narrative around the Freuds' lives in Vienna and London. At the same time, as the story of a home shared between Freud and his analyst-daughter, Anna, the guide is concerned with the development of psychoanalysis after the death of its founder: the War Nurseries in Hampstead and Essex, for example; Dorothy Burlingham's work at the Hampstead Clinic, and the establishment of the Freud Museum itself as a "living" archive and vital resource for psychoanalytic research. --Vicky Lebeau