1907

 

1F

Prof. Dr Freud
Vienna IX, Berggasse 19
25 June 1907

Dear Colleague,

I already knew about your paper,1 which I have now read with great interest. The complete analogy in the pre-history of these neuroses² is really very peculiar. I have the impression that there is less difficulty in uncovering these experiences in the case of dementia praecox than there is in hysteria, just as paranoia in general is the more transparent so far as the first part of the correlation is concerned.

I eagerly await your communications. If I can offer you something of use through my remarks on your new findings, I shall gladly do so. I particularly like that you have tackled the sexual side of the problem, the side that hardly anybody is willing to approach.

Collegially and respectfully yours,

Dr Freud

1.  Abraham, 1907[9]. The paper is based on a lecture at the annual meeting of the Deutscher Verein für Psychiatrie in Frankfurt/Main on 27 April; the article had just appeared, and Abraham had sent an offprint to Freud.

2.  Dementia praecox and hysteria. At that time the group of illnesses now combined under Bleuler's term “schizophrenia” was generally called “dementia praecox” (A. Morel; E. Kraepelin).

In his paper, Abraham had tried to show that “the infantile sexuality of the individual is expressed in the symptoms of a subsequent outbreak of dementia praecox in the same way as Freud has demonstrated in cases of hysteria” (1907[9]: p. 13).

2F

Prof. Dr Freud
Vienna IX, Berggasse 19
7 July 1907

My dear Colleague,

I have read your acute and, what is more important, conclusive remarks¹ with quite special interest. Before I deal with them, there is just one possibility that I should like to clear out of the way, namely that you should not regard remarks of mine such as “That we knew already” or “I came to a similar conclusion” as making any claim, in whatever direction. Please also consider yourself at liberty to make use of my observations in any way you wish. You have, of course, been spared the mistake, through which I had to pass, of considering sexual traumas to be the specific aetiology of neurosis.2 At that time I did not yet know that these experiences are very common, and when I discovered this, I was still fortunately able to turn to the psycho-sexual constitution. But it is really salutary that work on these sexual traumas should be undertaken by someone who, unlike me, has not been made uncertain by that first great error. For you, as for me, the compelling thing is that these traumas become the form-giving factor in the symptomatology of neurosis.

There is one consideration that I must not withhold from you that is certainly valid in the case of hysteria—I do not know whether it also applies to dementia praecox. The hysteric later moves very far away from infantile auto-erotism, he exaggerates his object-cathexis (in this he is the counterpart of the fully demented case, who, in our assumption, reverts to auto-eroticism). He accordingly fantasizes his need of objects back into his childhood and clothes his auto-erotic childhood in phantasies of love and seduction. Rather like lovers who can no longer imagine that there was ever a time when they did not know each other and construct earlier meetings and relations on a flimsy basis, i.e. a part of the sexual traumas reported by patients are or may be phantasies; distinguishing them from the very frequent genuine ones is not easy, and the complication of these circumstances and the relationship of sexual traumas to forgetting and remembering is one of the chief reasons why I cannot persuade myself to a definitive presentation.

My impression is that the age of from three to five is that to which the determination of symptoms dates back. Later traumas are mostly genuine, earlier ones or those falling within this period are prima facie doubtful. So here is a gap to be filled in by observation.

I am also aware of the multiplicity of traumas, in part from glaring examples. This multiplicity is partly a result of phantasy, but partly seems to be also a consequence of the circumstance that in a certain milieu the conditions for such experiences are very favourable, while in another they are meagre. In my cases of recent years, which come from very good social circles, sexual traumas before the age of five have definitely come second to auto-eroticism. From eight years onwards the opportunities, of course, abound in all social classes.

The question why children do not report sexual traumas has forced itself on our attention here too, and has been answered by us just as it has been by you: children keep silent when they have experienced a pleasure gain. That was how we explained the puzzle of why abuse by nurses and governesses is heard of only a long time after their dismissal, even though the child could have been sure of the protection of its affectionate parents. Masochism kept the secret. The behaviour of grown-up girls, incidentally, is analogous in most cases and may have the same motives. Your remark about the displacement of the sense of guilt is unquestionably absolutely correct.3 But why do some children talk all the same? It is hard to ascribe an abnormal organization to the others, because this abnormal constitution is the general infantile constitution. Perhaps here we are once again faced with a more-or-less rather than with a sharp dividing line, and the sexual trauma would then develop its pathogenic effect, release pleasure and sense of guilt, where it encounters a basis of strong auto-erotic foundation.

I find the two main points of your exposition, the unconscious intention in the experience of sexual traumas and the abnormal constitution,⁴ very convincing, only to me everything becomes more indistinct, i.e. it dissolves into a number of series. In one sense this constitution is, as I said, peculiar to all children, and the same infantile perversities, anal erotism, etc., can be found in the mentally healthy. However, in hysteria in particular the perverse talents can be assumed to be greater than in the basically healthy. A conclusion is confused and made more difficult to draw because later life events so often become the decisive factor and force back infantile experiences to play the role of dispositions of which use has fortunately not been made. As for the unconscious purpose— and I think that your view, in all its stringency, is valid even for a number of infantile personalities—this should be modified to the extent that the dividing line between consciousness and unconsciousness has not yet been established in early childhood. The child reacts as if compulsively to sexual impulses, as if unconsciously in fact, but without an inner conflict arising in the process.

I think it was in a passage in the Interpretation of Dreams (or in another work? Aetiology?⁵) that I hinted at the idea that theory could find the fundamental prerequisite for the possibility of neurosis in the phenomenon of the sexual latency period. The child is not equipped to cope mentally with stronger sexual impressions, and hence reacts to them compulsively, as if unconsciously—that is the first deficiency in the mechanism; as a consequence of the somatic intensification of the releasing of sexuality, these impressions later exercise more powerful effects as a retrospective reaction [nachträglich]⁶ and as memories than they did when they were real impressions, and that is the second psychological deficiency, because this constellation of retrospectively strengthened unpleasure released by memories [Erinnerungsunlust] makes repression possible, which would not succeed against perceptions. Even today, I have not got any further than that, and yet I feel that a thorough examination of the whole question is still necessary. In spite of these reservations, or rather uncertainties, of mine, I can grant you that whole large parts of your exposition make a fascinating, even convincing impression; I am thinking in particular of what refers to traumas experienced at a somewhat later age. So do not let yourself be dissuaded from telling me more about your experiences. I shall gladly tell you all I know or can think of, and I honestly ask you to excuse that my present reactions have turned out to be so meagre.

In any case, you have tackled the problem at the right end and, moreover, at the point where most people are unwilling to touch it. Also I am particularly glad that the approach to dementia praecox by way of auto-eroticism seems hopeful to you. This, however, should be weighed against the normal auto-eroticism of childhood, and merely a return to auto-eroticism be postulated in dementia. I am very glad to know that all of you in Zurich are taking this heavy labour out of my hands. Your youth and fresh vigour, and the fact that you can spare yourselves the wrong turnings that I took, all promise the best.

With heartfelt thanks and in expectation of further friendly news from you, I am,

your devoted

Dr Freud

1.  The reference is to a lost letter of Abraham's. The ideas to which Freud goes on to refer appear in Abraham, 1907[10], published in November 1907.

2.  Between 1895 and 1897, Freud had developed what was later called “seduction theory”, claiming that the memory of sexual seductions or assaults in early childhood was the primary factor in the aetiology of neuroses. His renunciation of this theory is generally regarded as the decisive step towards psychoanalysis proper, which stresses the importance of phantasy, inner reality, and infantile sexuality.

3.  Abraham, 1907[10]: p. 52.

4.  In his article, Abraham stated “that in a great number of cases the trauma was desired by the child unconsciously, and that we have to recognize it as a form of infantile sexual activity” (1907[10]: p. 48), but that “[i]nfantile sexual traumas play no ætiological rôle in hysteria and dementia præcox…. Instead of an ætiological significance, the infantile sexual trauma now receives a formative one” (ibid.: p. 62).

5.  The following ideas had been discussed by Freud at length (1950c [1895]: pp. 352–359; 1896b: p. 167; 1896c: p. 212; cf. the editor's comments in S.E. 1: p. 356, and S.E. 3: p. 167).

6.  James Strachey's translation of Nachträglichkeit as “deferred action” in the Standard Edition has been the subject of recent criticism. We take over the term used by Peter Hoffer in his translation of the Freud/Ferenczi letters. [Trans.]

3F

Hôtel du Lac Lavarone (South Tyrol)

Lavarone1
26 July 1907

My dear Colleague,

Your letter² is the first of scientific content that has followed me here into the holidays. It only increased my enjoyment, because it again bears witness to the advance of knowledge in the matter of dementia praecox and revives the prospect of the realization of long-restrained hopes. I reply to your rich offerings with only two remarks, which I have had in store for a long time, and which coincide so perfectly with what you say that I can let them merge with them.

1. It has struck me that patients, when they finally turn towards dementia and lose the resemblance to hysteria, hand over their (sexually infantile) phantasies without resistance, as if these had now lost their value, rather the way a person who has renounced marriage throws away the devalued keepsakes, ribbons, locks of hair, etc. The context in which I should like to place this behaviour also is that the essence of this turn [to dementia] lies in the withdrawal of the libido from the sexual object.

2. I have always assumed that in individuals formerly usually described as “idiopathic” [Originäre], and who later become obviously paranoid, the necessary development from auto-eroticism to object-love has only inadequately been achieved. With a proportion of cases of dementia this factor would supply the looked-for predisposition for the later illness, and that would fit in admirably with the general pathological view that illness always means regression in development. (The evolution and involution of English authors.³)

This is nearly the same as what you report, and this correspondence may strengthen anew your being forced to look at things in this way.

So allow me to thank you cordially for your communications, to the continuation of which I wish to encourage you because of the most lively interest I take in what you are working on.

Moreover, let us neither forget the mostly partial nature of the withdrawal of libido, nor that the development of sexual life permits a similar predisposition to be indicated in the case of hysteria. With regard to the obsessional neurosis I do not yet see clearly.

Your cordially devoted

Dr Freud

1.  South Tyrolian (then Austrian) resort. From there, towards the end of August, Freud and his family moved to Wolkenstein in the Dolomites, and then to Annenheim in Carinthia. On 12 September, Freud went to Bolzano, and then to Rome via Florence and Orvieto. He left Rome on 26 September and started work on 30 September. (Cf. Jones, 1955: pp. 35–38.)

2.  Missing.

3.  Italicized words in English in original.

4A

Zurich
9 August 1907

Dear Professor Freud,

Today, once again, I have to ask for your understanding for not having replied to your letter any sooner. As both my superiors, Bleuler and Jung,¹ were away at the same time, I have had no opportunity for anything but hospital duties during the last fortnight. I was very glad indeed to hear that you identify with the views I expressed in the last letter. However, I would add some comments regarding the two main points of your last letter.

The communication of phantasies, delusional ideas, etc., happens without resistance in certain phases of dementia praecox. Right at this moment I am treating a lady who reels off her most intimate affairs, including her religious delusion of grandeur, as an outsider would speak of some commonly known incident. Many mental patients behave like this in a particular phase. At other times, however, it is impossible to elicit even a single word about these matters. On yet other occasions, one easily obtains information about the delusional constructions, but not the least about the “voices”. This alternating behaviour is not clear to me. I would be ready to admit that the revelation of the most intimate secrets is a sign of the onset of dementia, if the concept of dementia had been clarified; so far, however, this is not the case. I believe what in cases of chronic mental illness is called dementia is nothing but the patient shutting himself away from the world, the withdrawal of libido from persons and objects. In organic psychoses and in epilepsy, one also speaks of dementia. This is unfortunate, since we are dealing with two completely different things. The epileptic becomes demented in a completely different way: in his case the mental impoverishment is progressive. Yet he retains the capacity to react emotionally, which is lost in the patient suffering from dementia praecox. In spite of all the dementia, even in deepest imbecility, the epileptic shows definite object-love. He is full of exaggerated praise for the members of his family; his handshake with the doctor cannot be cordial enough; he cannot find words enough to express his emotions; he clings tenaciously to his possessions—in everything the complete opposite of dementia praecox. Thus, we are faced with a strange fact: epileptics become “demented” and keep their object-libido, the chronic mental patients become demented and lose their object-libido. Therefore, the concept of dementia urgently needs clarification. In psychiatry, they literally play around with this concept! Some regard paranoia (or dementia praecox, or whatever one may call it) as a partial mental disturbance involving only certain psychic capacities; others call every absurd delusion “demented” or imbecile. One might just as well regard the thousand apparently meaningless and yet meaningful absurdities of the dream as demented, and every person as imbecile when dreaming. What is called dementia in the chronic mental patient seems to me something dissoluble, in contrast to epileptic, paralytic or senile imbecility, which is irreversible. As for dementia praecox, ideas and emotions are temporarily barred (though often for a very long time). Whether or not this can be cleared up seems to me to depend on the severity and depth of the “complex”.2

In connection with the second point in your letter, I would like to try to substitute another term for that of dementia in cases of chronic mental illness. Apparently, the insufficient development towards object-love is due to an inhibition in the unfolding of the personality. Personality is, after all, nothing but the individual's way of reacting to the stimuli emanating from his environment. It has become clear to me from your works that the reaction to the environment is very closely connected with sexuality. Every acute episode of dementia praecox is an obstacle to the development of the personality, and, in severe cases, it may stop this development for good. I therefore believe that in cases of chronic mental illness one ought to speak of a standstill in personality development rather than of dementia.

To conclude, I should like to express to you, dear Professor Freud, my warmest thanks for your interest. It was more than I deserved that you should have concerned yourself with my letter even during your holidays. I am sending this letter to your address in Vienna, since this might be the surest way for it to reach you, should you still be travelling. Much as I am anxious to hear from you further, I do ask you to postpone your answer until your return.

Your gratefully devoted

Dr Abraham

1.  Eugen Bleuler [1857–1939], famous Swiss psychiatrist, professor in Zurich, director of the Cantonal Sanatorium and Psychiatric University Clinic Burghölzli in Zurich. He coined the terms schizophrenia, autism and ambivalence. He was a champion of the temperance movement.

Carl Gustav Jung [1875–1961] was then senior staff physician [Oberarzt] at the Burghölzli and thus Abraham's direct superior.

Bleuler had introduced psychoanalysis at the Burghölzli, which gradually became the international centre of “dynamic psychiatry” and one of the most important and progressive institutions of Europe. It was through Bleuler and Jung that nearly all important psychiatric disciples of Freud's first came into contact with him—among them Abraham, who had joined the staff at the end of the year 1904.

2.  The notion of “complex”, a repressed group of ideas and associations, is usually ascribed to the Zurich School, especially to Jung (see 1906, 1909b), but earlier it had already been used by Breuer (Breuer & Freud, 1895d: p. 231) and by Freud (e.g. 1950c [1895]: p. 355) in this sense. Abraham published these ideas on dementia in condensed form (1908[11]: pp. 75–76).

5A

Zurich, Burghölzli
6 October 1907

Dear Professor,

Please forgive me for approaching you today without waiting for your reply to my last letter. This time I am not writing about scientific matters but about something personal. I intend to leave Zurich in about a month. In doing so, I am giving up my present work as a doctor in a psychiatric hospital. The reasons are not far to find: as a Jew in Germany and as a foreigner in Switzerland, I have not advanced beyond a junior position in the past seven years. I shall therefore try to set up in practice in Berlin as a specialist for nervous and mental diseases. To be sure, there is no shortage of neurologists in Berlin, but I am building my hopes on two factors: first, the use of psychoanalysis; and, second, my psychiatric training, which all Berlin doctors lack completely. You will already have guessed why I am writing to you. I should like to ask for your recommendation, should you ever be in a position to have to recommend a doctor for psychological treatment in Berlin. I am fully aware of the difficulties I shall encounter, and I should therefore also like to ask your permission, to turn to you for advice if the occasion arises. I should be most beholden to you for your kind support in both these respects.

I have unfortunately not yet been able to publish my paper on the sexual trauma in childhood,¹ since the preparations for the move to Berlin and other matters have kept me too busy. I hope, however, to be able to finish it still within this month. After that I shall perhaps allow myself to submit something new to you again.

Your respectfully devoted

Dr K. Abraham

1.  Abraham, 1907[10].

6F

Prof. Dr Freud
Vienna IX, Berggasse 19
8 October 1907

Dear Colleague,

I soon suppressed the first impulse of regret I felt on reading your letter. No harm can come to a youthful man like you from being forced into open life “au grand air”, and that as a Jew you will encounter more difficulties will have the effect, as it has with all of us, of bringing out all your productive capabilities. That my sympathy and best wishes are with you on your new path goes without saying; and more than that, whenever possible. If my intimate friendship with Dr W. Fliess1 from Berlin still existed, the way would be levelled for you; but now unfortunately that road is completely blocked. During the past year I have repeatedly been in the position of having to tell patients from Germany I was sorry I knew no confidant in the Reich to whom I could recommend them. If such cases recur this year, however, I shall know what to do. If my reputation in Germany increases, it will certainly be advantageous for you, and if I may forthrightly refer to you as my pupil and follower—you do not seem to me to be a man to be ashamed of that—I shall be able to back you energetically. On the other hand, you yourself know the hostility with which I still have to struggle in Germany. I hope you will make no attempt whatever to win the favour of your new colleagues, who first of all are like those everywhere else, and then a whole lot more brutal on top of it, but will instead turn directly to the public. At the time when the fight against hypnosis was at its most violent in Berlin, a very disagreeable hypnotist named Grossmann quickly built himself up a big practice on the basis of that therapy. So one should rather expect that with the aid of psychoanalysis you should do even better.

You indicate that there is still something you would like to submit to me, and I hope you know that I am at your disposal to the best of my ability. Does not the journey from Zurich to Berlin conveniently take in Vienna?

I shall look for your last letter in order to answer it as soon as you have enough peace again to discuss scientific matters.

With my most intense good wishes,

your devoted

Dr Freud

1. Wilhelm Fliess [1858–1928], Berlin physician and otorhinolaryngologist; Freud's closest friend between 1887 and 1900 (cf. Freud, 1985c [1887–1904]).

7A

Zurich, Burghölzli
13 October 1907

Dear Professor,

Your letter gave me great pleasure and was, at the same time, the best encouragement I could receive. Many thanks for your warm interest, which is apparent in every line of your letter. If you want to call me your pupil, I see no reason why I should object. On the contrary, I see in this a recognition on your part and assure you that for the past three years— that is how long I have studied your works—I have regarded you as my teacher. I shall accept your invitation to come to Vienna as soon as I can. I hope to be settled in Berlin by the beginning of December. If at all possible, I should then like to come to Vienna for a few days.

The Berlin colleagues I know well. I was a physician at the Berlin mental hospital Dalldorf1 for more than three years, until I could bear it no longer. I know how difficult it is in medical Berlin to stand up against an established doctrine. In Zurich I could breathe freely again. No clinic in Germany could have offered me even a fraction of what I have found here. That is also why I do not find it easy to leave. But I have to think of the future, especially since I am married.²

I hope before long to be able to report personally on my scientific plans. I fear I claimed enough of your attention for the time being with my letter about the problem of dementia, and so I would rather not put anything more before you today. Incidentally, in spite of the impending move, I am quite in the mood for a discussion.

No fewer than twenty doctors appeared at the second meeting of our “Freud Society”³ here; some came quite a long distance, from hospitals in the country. So there is no lack of interest here. The next time I shall talk about the question of the infantile sexual trauma. I secretly hope that I can gradually make some propaganda in Berlin.

With kind regards,

your gratefully devoted

Dr K. Abraham

1.  This name was later changed to Wittenau.

2.  To Hedwig Marie, née Bürgner [1878–1969].

3.  An open and informal forum for discussions, founded in 1907.

8F

Prof. Dr Freud
Vienna IX, Berggasse 19
21 October 1907

My dear Colleague,

Seeing that you are in a humour for disputation, I will gladly answer your letter of 9 August.

I am in full agreement with what you say about dementia, that is to say, I have explained things to myself in a similar way without being able to find the confirmation in the material. I see dementia praecox only very rarely, and other cases of imbecility practically never. I can repeat in your own words that the dementia of dementia praecox must have a different mechanism than that of the senile, epileptics, etc. After all, it does not matter what tricks the psychiatrists play with the word. The dementia in dementia praecox must therefore be dissoluble (virtute!), a functional one, so to speak. Its prototype would be the unbelievable momentary stupidity that we observe in analyses when the insight we are looking for has to work against great resistances. The intellectual cathexis simply does not want to go where we wish to direct it. Given the reluctance to cathect the object that we assume in dementia praecox, the phenomenon must, naturally, turn out to be a much more impressive one. Another prototype—scientifically not usable—would be the highly remarkable stupidity that we are accustomed to finding in the arguments of our opponents, even of otherwise rather intelligent ones. Also just resistance.

But you now want to launch an inquisition into the term “dementia” itself and replace it, in the case of dementia praecox, by another, that of “inhibition of the personality”. Unimportant as such questions of definition are, in this matter I would rather not go along with you. Why? Who expects “dementia” to stand for anything other than a symptom that may occur under the most varied conditions (mechanisms)? It just means that the intellectual cathexis is not available for the necessary tasks. The term dementia is not meant to specify whether this is so because the intellectual cathexis is not there, or because it is needed elsewhere, or because this activity is forbidden it. I do not care if anyone wants to call the dream demented; but with such scolding he does not touch at all on the mechanism that makes the dream demented, and which is the essential characteristic of it. It is like the case of a son in need who asks his father for support. If the father gives nothing, the reason may be that he himself has nothing, or that he no longer likes the son and does not want to give him anything. To the son this is to a certain extent of no importance, he can starve or go under just as well in one case as in the other.

“Personality”, analogous to your superior's1 notion of the ego, is a rather vague term from surface psychology that does nothing in particular for the understanding of the actual processes, that is to say, does nothing in particular metapsychologically.² One easily believes, however, that one is saying something meaningful in using it.

Collegially and respectfully,

your very devoted

Dr Freud

1.  Eugen Bleuler.

2.  The term “metapsychology” was introduced by Freud and first used in his correspondence with Fliess (13 February 1896, Freud, 1985c [1887–1904]: p. 172), in an analogy with metaphysics, for a “psychology that leads behind consciousness” (10 March 1898, ibid.: pp. 301–302). Metapsychology supposes models of the “psychic apparatus”—e.g. id, ego, superego; unconscious, preconscious, conscious; distribution of drive energy— at a high level of abstraction. Freud later defined a metapsychological presentation as one that describes “a psychical process in its dynamic, topographical and economic aspects” (1915e: p. 181).

9A

Zurich
31 October 1907

Dear Professor,

Heartfelt thanks for your letter. Our move is now taking place earlier than we intended at first after all, so that I will not have another chance to reply in Zurich. As soon as I am settled in Berlin, I hope to be able to come to Vienna, and I am already looking forward very much to talking with you. Would it be inconvenient for you if I came in the second half of November? My address from 7 November onwards is: Berlin W., Schöneberger Ufer 22.

Your gratefully devoted

Dr K. Abraham

10A

Berlin W., Schöneberger Ufer 22
24 November 1907

Dear Professor,

Having been in Berlin for a fortnight, I have settled in to some extent and would soon like to start my practice. Before doing so, as I wrote to you from Zurich, I would like to talk to you about various things, both scientific and practical. So I am now taking the liberty of asking whether a visit in about a week's time would be convenient for you. I would, of course, like to fit in entirely with your arrangements; I should especially like to know whether you would prefer my visit on a weekday or on a Sunday. I am looking forward to your kind reply and I thank you very much in advance.

At the same time, I am taking the liberty of sending you my paper on the sexual trauma in childhood, which has just appeared.1

Your respectfully devoted

Dr K. Abraham

1.  Abraham, 1907[10].

11F

Vienna IX, Berggasse 19
26 November 1907¹

Dear Colleague,

I have read your excellent paper² with satisfaction, and, having already previously acknowledged the justification of your basic idea, I can now praise the clarity with which you describe the differences in the concepts of infantile traumas, the relationship between pleasure, silence, and guilt feelings, and the like. To your description of the abnormality of subsequently neurotic children (quantitative increase of libido, precocity, rampant growth of phantasies) I should like to add as an essential feature the existence of a strong tendency to repression, otherwise we should get, not neurotics, but scoundrels. The proof of this pair of opposites, to an extremely high degree and in split form, seems to me to be the latest result of analysis to date.

I would like to get as much as possible from your visit to Vienna and therefore ask you to include in your programme a whole Sunday on which you would be my guest. On weekdays I have hardly a free hour in the evening, and then of course I am not very good company. I would appreciate to know a few days in advance on which Sunday I may expect you.

Yours with sincere regards,

Dr Freud

1.  The translation is based on the text as in the German edition of Freud & Abraham, 1965; the letter is missing in the holdings of the Library of Congress [= LOC].

2.  On the following day Freud mentioned Abraham's article at the meeting of the Wednesday Society (see letter 13A, 21 December 1907, n. 1; Nunberg & Federn, 1962: p. 233).

12A

Dr med. K. Abraham

Specialarzt für nervöse und psychische Krankheiten
Berlin W. 35. Schöneberger Ufer 22

Tel. Amt VI, 13245
Sprechst. 9–10, 4–6. Sonntags 9–10

6 December 1907

Dear Professor Freud,

Your appreciative words, as well as your kind invitation, have given me much pleasure. I now intend to come to Vienna at the end of next week, so that I can spend Sunday, the 15th, with you. I would be very grateful for a short note from you informing me whether this date is convenient for you and at what time you expect me.

With respectful greetings,

Yours,

Dr K. Abraham

13A

Berlin
21 December 1907

Dear Professor,

Late on Wednesday night,1 when I got back to the hotel, I found the little box² in my briefcase. The contents and the accompanying words gave me much pleasure. With this so charmingly chosen courtesy you topped all the preceding ones. Let me thank you cordially once again for all your hospitality and for all the instruction and stimulation. I do very much hope that the number of the followers of your science may increase. But if they were all to come and make as much claim on your hospitality and time as I did, then perhaps you might one day prefer your enemies to your friends! The days that I was allowed to spend in your company and in the midst of your family were most gratifying to me. To be surrounded by so much kindliness and at the same so much culture is a rare joy. I left with the feeling of staying deeply indebted to you. Maybe I shall be able to pay off, step by step, a part of this debt by scientific collaboration.

I shall soon present to you something on the question of the withdrawal of libido in dementia praecox. I was consulted today about a young patient whom you examined some time ago in Görlitz.³ He now has a severe hallucinatory psychosis; the obsessional symptoms persist. This case, in conjunction with two others I observed previously, seems to me of great importance for our views.

I shall conclude for today with kindest regards, also from my wife, and I also ask you to remember me to the Wednesday Society.

Your cordially devoted

Karl Abraham

1.  In 1902, Freud's followers had begun meeting in Freud's waiting-room on Wednesday evenings, forming the so-called “Wednesday (Psychological) Society”, which in 1908 became the Vienna Psychoanalytic Society [= Vienna Society]. On 18 December, Abraham had attended such a meeting as guest (Nunberg & Federn, 1962: p. 254). Abraham described his stay in Vienna in a letter to his friend and colleague Max Eitingon (1 January 1908, LOC; also in H. Abraham, 1974: pp. 72–74), who had been the first from the Burghölzli staff to visit Freud.

2.  Containing two small Egyptian figures from Freud's collection.

3.  Freud described this case in his letter to Jung of 14 April 1907 (Freud & Jung, 1974 [1906–13]: pp. 33–34).