1910

 

81F

Vienna IX, Berggasse 19
20 January 1910

Dear Doctor,

A patient, the sister of one of your latest patients, had to show me an advertisement in a Berlin paper announcing the beginning of your courses. That reminded me of how long it is since I last wrote to you.

Recently I have been in a position three times to mention your name here, twice to patients whom I wanted to refer to you and once to a Finn who was referred to me by a circle of young doctors and philosophers in Berlin (!). I let these gentlemen know that they should, rather, get in touch with you and extend your circle of pupils. As regards the patients, I have unfortunately learnt that the number of shots that score hits is still very small; but he who sits it out will have good times ahead.

You are probably following how eagerly the Americans are participating in the cause. Jones is working very eagerly, and Putnam is just publishing a series of articles on our visit to Worcester in the Journal of Abnormal Psychology.1 Stanley Hall will devote the whole April issue of the American Journal of Psychology to us.² Both of them recently gave the confused and dishonest Boris Sidis a thorough rebuff at a meeting of American psychologists.³

Our Congress in Nuremberg is fixed for 30 and 31 March, that is, just after Easter. The invitations will be going out very soon. We Europeans will, I hope, be present in full force. This time the subject will be primarily questions of principle and organization.⁴

We have been extending hospitality to L. Binswanger and his wife⁵ since Sunday, as far as Viennese hospitality can possibly go in these days of hard work. My wife obviously prefers the memory of another Ψα couple who have not fully been our guests so far. But please do not pass this on.

I cannot do any work at all now. Handicraft work such as the preparation of the 2nd edition of the Sexual Theory and of the German edition of the Worcester lectures, letters, the seminar, the Wednesday meetings—that is all. Not a line on Leonardo for weeks. I gladly yield precedence to Segantini.

I send you my cordial greetings and hope that you and your little family are very well.

Yours in friendship,

Freud

1. James Jackson Putnam [1846–1918], Professor of Neurology at Harvard University; co-editor of the Journal of Abnormal Psychology. He was a participant in the celebration for Clark University and host to Freud, Ferenczi, and Jung in his lodge in the Adirondacks. In 1911 he founded and was first president of the American Psychoanalytic Association. He was interested in combining psychoanalysis and philosophy. (See Putnam, 1909–10.)

2. American Journal of Psychology (1910), 21, containing the Worcester lectures of Freud (1910a [1909]) and Jung (1910b), as well as papers by Ferenczi (1909[66]) and Jones (1910b).

3. Eighteenth annual meeting of the American Psychological Association, Cambridge, Massachusetts, 29–31 December 1909. The afternoon of 29 December was given over to abnormal psychology and psychoanalysis. Sidis “deprecated the present prospect of a Freud cult in this country and said it seemed likely to be a passing craze but that people would get over it” (Hall's letter to Freud of 30 December 1909; in Rosenzweig, 1992: p. 367).

Boris Sidis [1867–1923], a political refugee from Russia, studied psychology with William James at Harvard. From 1896 to 1901 associate psychologist at the Pathological Institute of the New York State Hospitals; he practised in Brookline, Massachusetts, between 1904 and 1909, when he established the Sidis Institute for Nervous and Mental Disorders in Portsmouth, New Hampshire. Associate editor, under Morton Prince, of the Journal of Abnormal Psychology. He was a vehement opponent of psychoanalysis.

4. Having played with the idea that psychoanalysts could join the “International Order for Ethics and Culture”, founded by the Swiss pharmacist Alfred Knapp, or even to join a “certain [political?] party in practical life” (letter to Adler, undated, LOC), Freud had finally proposed, in letters to Jung and Ferenczi, “a tighter organization with formal rules and a small fee” (1 January 1910, Freud & Ferenczi, 1992: p. 119). Ferenczi was to work out the statutes and present them at the congress.

5. Hertha, née Buchberger, a psychiatric nurse with whom Binswanger became acquainted during his stay in Jena [1907/08]. The couple had married on 2 April 1908 (cf. Fichtner, 1992: p. xviii). Their visit to Freud is described by Binswanger (1956).

82A

Berlin
23 January 1910

Dear Professor,

When your letter arrived yesterday, I had been about to write myself. As I know how many claims there are on your time, it goes without saying that I do not settle accounts with you “an eye for an eye”.¹ I thank you from my heart for all the kindness contained in your letter.

At the moment I am not quite so isolated in Berlin, as I often meet up with the peripatetics (Karpas,² Eitingon etc.). The course is turning out very well. I have nine participants, all of whom seem to be quite interested. Oddly enough, the four doctors from here who had registered definitely did not appear at all!

Frau Dr Meyer, my new patient, whom I have actually seen only once, is attached to you with a textbook transference. As soon as I know more, I will report to you about the case.

I am very much looking forward to Nuremberg. At present, however, I do not know what questions of principle are to be discussed.—Who is taking on the organization in N.[uremberg]? I have a fairly good knowledge of the hotels and the general situation there and can perhaps advise in one way or another.

I have sent the “Dream States” to Jung.3 Now Segantini should be coming—should, but at present I am forensic psychiatrist “in fulltime office”, that is to say I am overburdened with reports on court cases. I like this activity very much next to psychotherapeutic work, and for the sake of my income I cannot do without it either. The general outcome of 1909 was very encouraging, I have brought it up to over 8,000 M.— Segantini is going to make me go also into the question of flying,⁴ and it is actually not to my liking to anticipate Leonardo. Recently—unfortunately only for too short a time—I analysed a highly intelligent writer who, because of infantilisms, was intensely concerned with the problem of flying; he also has his sublimations very much in common with Segantini.

The opposition in Berlin will probably show itself in a very unpleasant way in the near future. Ziehen is letting one of his doctors give a “critical” review in the Gesellschaft für Psychiatrie und Nervenkrankheiten [Society for Psychiatry and Nervous Diseases], and—Moll, I hear from a reliable source, is preparing some dirty trick or other. No matter. In South Germany the situation seems to be much better. I hear about America quite often from Karpas. My general review of your writings— assuming you agree—will perhaps be translated into Russian by Dr Wulff in Odessa.

I have only partly read the last Jahrbuch, to be exact, wholly only your work, which reminded me vividly of the lecture in Salzburg.⁵ I hope this year's Congress will be really satisfactory. I have recently collected many interesting single observations, about which I should like to talk to you, but especially about a few theoretical points that seem important to me. Could you not perhaps come to N. a day earlier? The town is very attractive and very suitable for conversations while walking. Rotenburg ob der Tauber might possibly be a very suitable place for an excursion. I hope you and your family are well. Is your dear wife not perhaps coming to Nuremberg? My wife would very much like to go with me. There were a few ladies at the first Congress, too. The “psychoanalytical couple” here will probably not come to Vienna for the time being. With cordial greetings,

your devoted

Karl Abraham

1. 2 Moses 21, 24; 3 Moses 24, 20; Matthew 5, 38.

2. Morris J. Karpas [1879–1918], a charter member of the New York Psychoanalytic Society. He had been in Vienna from April to July 1909 and had attended a number of the Wednesday meetings. The “peripatetics” perhaps refer to Eitingon's—and Karpas's?—”analysis” with Freud during walks.

3. Abraham, 1910[17], to be published in the Jahrbuch, edited by Jung.

4. Cf. Abraham, 1911[30]: pp. 239ff., dealing with the question of why Segantini painted the Voluptuaries as well as Dea Pangana as floating in the air.

5. Freud's analysis of the Rat Man (1909d), about which he had spoken in Salzburg. The second half-volume of the Jahrbuch had come out in November 1909.

83A

Berlin
22 February 1910

Dear Professor,

I have announced a talk on fetishism¹ for Nuremberg. You told me in September that you might put your notes on an analytic case at my disposal. If it is no trouble to you, I would now like to ask you for them. But should I take up too much of your time with this request, I would rather restrict myself to my own case; perhaps you would then tell us something about your experiences in an eventual discussion? This one case has naturally not given me complete understanding, but I can put forward a number of new viewpoints.

I enclose the clipping of an advertisement that you may consider a favourable symptom. Several colleagues have asked me to arrange another course.

In March, I intend to arrange another four weeks'

Course on Freud's Theory of Neuroses

(including the theory of sexuality and dream analysis), twice weekly, on evenings still to be specified, from 8: 30 to 10. Begin: Monday, 28 February, 8: 30 p.m., in my apartment. Fee: 30 marks. Written or verbal (in the afternoon) applications are requested.

Dr med. K. Abraham
Berlin W. 35, Schöneberger Ufer 22
Tel. Amt VI. 132345

Did you happen to see the article on dream interpretation in the Frankfurter Zeitung? The author is one of my patients. The article is very intelligently written, only at the end does resistance appear, against wish-fulfilment, of course. You will probably receive a copy direct from the author.

With cordial greetings from house to house,

your devoted

Abraham

1. Abraham, 1910[18].

84F

Vienna IX, Berggasse 19
24 February 1910

Dear Colleague,

I am uncommonly pleased at being able to help you in something. Unfortunately it is only very little, but make any use of it you wish.

I have investigated only one case in detail; of others in which the subject of fetishism was instructively touched on I have only the results, not the notes.

The case was that of a highly educated, elegant, and sophisticated man of 25, who carefully adjusted the creases in his trousers before lying down for the first time on the Ψα couch.¹ He turned out to be a clothes fetishist in the better sense of the word, attached great importance to elegance and taste in his own clothes, and found a female person “impossible” if her dressing did not meet his ideal demands. He suddenly lost all interest in a girl who had greatly attracted him when she turned up for a rendezvous unsuitably dressed.

He was Ψ impotent² and, according to analysis, fixated on his mother, who had for years made him watch her dressing and undressing, at least up to the penultimate point, who is completely in love with him and would still be inclined to such intimacies to the present day, in spite of his withdrawing from them now. (During the treatment he achieved excellent potency but remained Ψ anaesthetic.) He was also a boot fetishist, also not of the crudest kind. His childhood was full of unusually intense coprophilic activity. At the age of eight to ten, for instance, he managed to keep a hard sausage hanging from his rectum, from which he kept breaking off little bits in the course of the day. He still was an over-sensitive “smeller”. In the years of puberty he was a voyeur, his masturbation began with his spying on undressing American women³ in a Swiss hotel.

I have learnt from other cases that boot fetishism goes back to an original pleasure (olfactory pleasure) in the dirty and stinking foot. As it is, this object also recurs in the positive perversion. I regard coprophilic olfactory pleasure as being the carrier of most cases of foot and boot fetishism.4 In addition, it must be emphasized that the female foot is probably a substitute for the painfully missed, prehistorically postulated, penis of the woman. A substitute for the same thing seems to be the plait. Cutting off plaits thus stands for the castration of women, “making” women, as it is through castration that one becomes a woman.

I have not analysed glaring cases of fetishism.

 

Your advertisement delighted me. You are standing on the most arid soil in Germany, and it will bear fruit for you.⁵ About the Congress I know only the following: apart from your lecture, Adler⁶ on hermaphroditism,⁷ full of all kinds of delusive lights, Marcinowski on sejunctive processes as the basis of psychoneuroses,⁸ probably also somewhat out of line, Ferenczi on organization and propaganda⁹ (having discussed it with me, he wants to suggest that we form an association and issue a little bulletin through which single members and the societies in Zurich and Vienna can get into touch with each other), Jung¹⁰ on the reception of Ψα in America; myself on the future chances of Ψα therapy.¹¹

Jung writes today that he has 22 registrations up to the present, including only two Viennese, of whom, however, 10–15 will come. I do not expect, incidentally, any substantially larger numbers than in Salzburg, but a more intimate alliance between the faithful.

My Viennese are not giving me much pleasure. Actually, the heavy cross I have to bear is with the older generation—Stekel, Adler, Sadger; they will soon think of me and treat me as an obstacle, and I cannot believe that they will have anything better to replace me with.

I am now writing on the Leonardo at odd times¹²; from next week onwards there will be a decrease in my practice, and then at last I want to get on with it. Otherwise I have nothing in store for the Sammlung. I will have to send back as flat and boring an essay by Riklin on Goethe's “beautiful soul”.¹³

As an epilogue to the American journey I shall probably be going to Karlsbad on 15 July to take the cure. Otherwise I am keeping pretty well. Hardship has been great so far, the opposition fierce, and the friends far away. Ferenczi was the one who did most for me; on one occasion I went to see him in Budapest, and he came to see me on a Sunday in return.¹⁴

I received the clever article in the Frankfurter Zeitung and did not actually believe the assurance that it had been written before reading the book.

Have I already mentioned to you that Stanley Hall is producing an issue of the American Journal of Psychology on 1 April that is to be filled exclusively with our lectures?

I send my cordial greetings to you and to your dear wife,

Yours,

Freud

1. Freud later used this incident to illustrate that the “patient's first symptoms…may…betray a complex which governs his neurosis” (1913c: p. 138).

2. That is, impotent for psychic reasons.

3. Amerikanerinnen, which can mean both American girls and women.

4. Freud had already alluded to this case and given his interpretation of fetishism in letter 65F, 18 February 1909.

5. Cf. Matthew 13, 3–9; Mark 4, 3–20; Luke 8, 5–15.

6. Alfred Adler [1870–1937], Viennese physician and psychologist, in contact with Freud at least since 1899 (letter of Freud to Adler of 27 February 1899, LOC), had been a member of the Wednesday Society from its beginning [1902]. In 1910 he became president of the Vienna Psychoanalytic Society and—with Wilhelm Stekel—editor of the Zentralblatt. From 1911 on he went his own way and founded what he called “individual psychology”, which views itself as a unique movement, different from psychoanalysis, emphasizing, among other things, the role of aggression, of rivalry among siblings, and social factors. (Cf. Handlbauer, 1992; Hoffman, 1994.)

7. Adler, 1910 (based on a talk in the Vienna Society on 23 February 1910—Nunberg & Federn, 1967).

8. Marcinowski, “Sejunktive Prozesse als Grundlage der Psychoneurosen und andere Behandlungsarten in der nervenärztlichen Praxis” [Sejunctive processes as the foundation of psychoneuroses and other methods of treatment in the practice of the nerve doctor].

9. Ferenczi, 1910[69], 1911[79].

10. Jung, 1910c.

11. Freud, 1910d; the final programme is reprinted in Freud & Jung, 1974 [1906–13]: p. 573.)

12. Italicized words in English in original.

13. Freud had received, on 12 February 1910, a manuscript of Riklin's, “Bekenntnisse der schönen Seele” [Confessions of a beautiful soul], a monograph about Book VI of Goethe's Wilhelm Meisters Lehrjahre (1796), for the Schriften zur angewandten Seelenkunde. The paper was based on a talk given to the Swiss Society [1907] and was not published. (Cf. also Freud to Ferenczi, 13 February 1910, Freud & Ferenczi, 1992: p. 137.)

14. At the end of November 1909, Freud had been for a “consultation in Budapest, which gave [him] an opportunity to see Ferenczi and share in his work” (2 December 1909, Freud & Jung, 1974 [1906–13]: p. 270). Ferenczi, in his turn, had visited Freud on 30 January 1910.

85A

Berlin
14 March 1910

Dear Professor,

In return for your last letter, which contained various manifest and latent complaints, I want to give you a sign of life once again. Above all, please accept my sincere thanks for your scientific information. I hope Nuremberg will be a real pleasure and compensate you for some of the unpleasantness. I am so very sorry that you are still not satisfied with your state of health. If Vienna were not so far away, I should have been glad to do the same as Ferenczi; would you not like to come to N. a day earlier? I should be glad to fit in with that, and we could continue the conversation that was interrupted six months ago in the train. I do not know if my suggestion is convenient for you; I, for my part, should be extraordinarily pleased if you accept it.

The Nuremberg programme is very varied, but the scientific part is not entirely as I would have wished. Incidentally, Juliusburger has also announced a paper. You have probably already heard of the subject in the meantime (on Feuerbach and Freud).1 The foundation of an Association and of a bulletin is very much to my liking.

My course, which this time has only four participants, ends before Easter. I derive much pleasure from it. In neither the first course nor this one has a participant missed one session. My present audience consists of a 60-year-old member of the Board of Health, a senior doctor at the Epileptic Institute in Potsdam, a doctor from a spa in the Schwarzwald, and a colleague from here named Dreyfus, a psychiatrist who is at present assistant to Oppenheim.² He is on the way to becoming an adherent, does analyses on his own initiative, and is independent enough not to bother about the general resistance in Berlin. I expect the best from him. He cannot come to Nuremberg, because he is going to Paris for study purposes.

The course takes up part of my evenings; in addition, there is the activity as expert witness for the court, which has become remarkably predominant since the beginning of the year. Oppenheim sends me few patients—perhaps he is piqued by the courses—and even then such as are certainly unsuitable for analysis; and if one is suitable, he asks me in writing not to use analysis. The court reports leave me hardly any time at all for scientific work. Segantini is barely progressing, and I shall not be able to get down to the paper on fetishism until Easter.

The author of the article in the Frankfurter Zeitung is now on his way to accepting wish-fulfilment. At the same time he is making progress in therapy.

Hirschfeld, who has returned from his lengthy journeys, told me yesterday that people often asked him about you in France and England. He intends to come to the Congress too.

This summer I will probably not be able to get out of Berlin because of our move and because of a happy event to be expected in late summer.³

With cordial greetings from house to house,

your devoted

Abraham

1. The talk was not held.

2. Probably Daniel K. Dreyfuss, later psychoanalyst in Israel.

3. The birth of Abraham's son in August (see letter 94F, 30 August 1910, and n 1).

86A

B.
21 March 1910¹

Dear Professor,

I am very glad to hear from you,² and I too shall be in Nuremberg on Tuesday morning. My train gets in at 7.45, yours, if I am not mistaken, an hour earlier.³

With cordial greetings,

Yours,

Abraham

1. Postcard.

2. Missing.

3. The Second International Psychoanalytic Congress took place on 30–31 March in Nuremberg. Freud opened it with a lecture on “The Future Prospects of Psycho-Analytic Therapy” (1910d), and Abraham spoke second, on “The Psychoanalysis of Fetishism” (1910[18]). The main event was the decision to found the IPA. Freud's and Ferenczi's plan to move its seat permanently to Zurich and to vest in Jung exceptional powers as president for life—every lecture or article was supposed to be presented to him for approval—encountered resistance, especially from Adler and Stekel. The power of the president was thereupon lessened and his term of office limited to two years. In addition, the Korrespondenzblatt [Bulletin], edited by Jung as President and by Riklin as Secretary of the IPA, was founded as the official organ of the Association. Back in Vienna, Freud offered Adler the chairmanship of the Vienna Society and accepted the editorship, with Adler and Stekel, of a new Zentralblatt für Psychoanalyse: Medizinische Monatsschrift für Seelenkunde [Zentralblatt], on the condition that he “could exercise the right of Veto against any article to be published” (Freud to Jones, 23 October 1924, Freud & Jones, 1993: p. 557).

87A

28 April 1910

Dear Professor,

I assume that you returned from Nuremberg feeling completely satisfied. The greatest pleasure for me was the mood in which all participants left the Congress. I travelled back with Eitingon, Hirschfeld, and Koerber, and during the whole of the nine hours' journey we did not stop discussing our impressions for one moment. Tomorrow I shall open the proceedings of our local Society with a introductory talk.

Meanwhile, you have once again given me new cause for gratitude. So far I have only read the first of the five lectures and glanced through the others.1 They come in very handy as an introduction for the many people who have recently become interested. The Americans, however, were the fortunate ones, being able to hear all this in the spoken word.— Moreover, you have my best thanks for recommending me to a patient. I do not yet know whether Herr Strasser is coming here from Budapest; according to his letter, however, that may well be possible.

Psychoanalysis has recently been flourishing in my consulting-room. I have started four new treatments in rapid succession, three of them in a very strange way. One of your former patients—I think his name is Rudolf Foerster²—has introduced analysis here to a small circle of neurotics. From this circle, first a very intelligent young woman arrived, who is getting better very nicely in treatment, and soon she sent her best [female] friend; then some days ago she sent still another friend who once discussed treatment with you in Vienna. His name is Mueller, and he is noticeable for his extreme Germanic blondness. These three are most interesting objects indeed; also, there is one case of actual parent-incest among them.³ From these cases, and from one other that Hirschfeld sent me for analysis, I have had nice results concerning the question of “flight from race”, mixed marriage, etc., which I intend to publish soon.⁴—Official resistance in Berlin is stronger than ever.

I hope that everything is going as you would wish with you and yours, especially your eldest daughter. Here preparations for things to come are taking up a great deal of our time, otherwise I would have given you some sign of life earlier. At least the question of an apartment is now settled.

With cordial greetings from house to house,

your devoted

Karl Abraham

1. Freud, 1910a [1909].

2. Dr Rudolf Foerster [?–1924] from Hamburg (cf. Abraham's obituary, 1924[105d]; not included in the bibliography of his writings).

3. Very probably, Abraham refers to Karen Horney (see letter 118A, 5 December 1911), her friend “Idchen” (Ida Behrmann), and Carl Müller-Braunschweig (Quinn, 1987: p. 143).

Müller-Braunschweig [1881–1958] had been in Vienna in 1908 to ask for an analysis with Freud, which, however, turned out to be too expensive (Maetze, 1976–77: p. 419). By 1921, lecturer at the Berlin Psychoanalytic Institute, and in 1925 member of the Executive Committee of the Berlin Society. He, and even more Felix Böhm, were to play a highly controversial role during the Nazi regime, more or less collaborating with the Nazis and being the principal exponents of the “Aryan” psychoanalysts who had not emigrated. (Cf. Brecht, n.d.; Goggin & Goggin, 2001.)

4. Abraham, 1914[45], in which the “patient of fair, north German type” is mentioned briefly (p. 49).

88F

Vienna IX, Berggasse 19
5 June 1910

Dear Doctor,

Apart from being ill and having to work,1 my long silence has been due to the delay in the appearance of Leonardo, which I had expected from one week to the next. L. is out at last, my digestion is improving under medical care, but I still have to work for another 40 days. At least my eldest is very much better. Wife and second daughter returned from Karlsbad today.

Your good news pleased me very much. Otherwise you are just the man to stick things out. Attacks still do not disturb my mood. Our latest reaction,² the foundation of the Zentralblatt, will soon turn out to be biologically advantageous. Privy Councillor Friedländer (!) recently spent four hours with me one evening; I kept him for such a long time in order to study him. As a result of the examination I ask you to take it [it really need not be kept secret]³ that he is a liar, a scoundrel, and an ignoramus.

Yesterday I had a much more pleasing visit from Ossipow of Moscow,⁴ who has a good mind and is a convinced follower. He came to get permission to publish the Worcester lectures in Russian in his journal.⁵

If your small group should be showing signs of despondency, then comfort them with the news that the third edition of the Interpretation of Dreams is to appear this winter, that is to say, only a year after the second.⁶ The interval between the first and second ones was nine years. Nonum prematur in annum.⁷

I have of course been able to do only a small amount of work. Just now I am preparing a trifle on love life for the Jahrbuch.⁸ We will probably put the Nuremberg talk into the first issue of the Zentralblatt.⁹

Jung is having great difficulties in Z.[urich] at present.¹⁰ The Jahrbuch is delayed through Deuticke's fault, the organization is moving slowly. There are such times, but the standstill is only apparent.—Do the domestic news refer only to your changing apartments?

I send my cordial greetings to you and your dear family,

Yours,

Freud

My collegial greetings to the gentlemen of the local Society.

1. Freud had “thirteen patients, nine hours a day” (22 April 1910, Freud & Jung, 1974 [1906–13]: p. 310); in addition, he had caught influenza (17 May 1910; ibid.: p. 317).

2. Reading uncertain.

3. Square brackets in original.

4. Nikolai Jewgrafowitsch Ossipow [1877–1934], chief physician at the Psychiatric University Clinic in Moscow. Co-founder of the Russian Psychoanalytic Society, and Freud's translator. In 1920 he emigrated to Istanbul, and in 1921 to Prague where he became docent for psychoanalysis. Ossipow had come forward with reports about psychoanalysis as early as 1908. (Cf. Wulff, 1910–11.)

5. Freud, 1910a [1909], trans. Ossipow (Moscow: Nauka, 1912 [Psikhoterapevtikcheskaia biblioteka, vyp. 1]).

6. The third edition of Freud, 1900a, was published in early 1911.

7. Referring to Horace's “Nonumque prematur in annum” (Art of Poetry, 388) [“And it must remain hidden until into the ninth year”]—namely the masterpiece on which the poet is supposed to be working that long.

8. Freud, 1910h. The gist of the paper had already been given before the Vienna Society on 19 May 1909 and was discussed a week later.

9. Freud, 1910d, in the first number of the Zentralblatt (1910, 1: 1–9).

10. With Bleuler, who did not want to join the newly founded IPA—of which his collaborator Jung was president. In particular, Bleuler objected to the exclusive attitude of the organization.

89A

Berlin
6 June 1910

Dear Professor,

A new work of yours always generates a somewhat anxious suspense—whether it will yet again be an advance on earlier ones. The suspense has now been resolved. The analysis is so delicate and so perfect in form that I do not know anything quite like it.

I can best express my thanks for the book by getting on quickly with my Segantini. But the material overwhelms me by its diversity, and I am only making slow progress.

The practice is improving greatly. A Herr Dr Sachs has come to me on your recommendation. His mother-in-law, Frau Henschel, has corresponded with you. Please accept my sincere thanks for this, too!

Our local group is doing well. Stegmann is coming from Dresden for the session on the 8th; last time Warda was here. That does show a gratifying interest. You have surely read about the heresy trial in Hamburg¹; almost like the new Encyclical. But you can see from it that psychoanalysis is in the air; Deuticke must notice it most, at least that is what book-sellers here are saying. With sincere thanks and regards,

Yours,

Abraham

1. At the meeting of the Medical Society of Hamburg on 29 March 1910, several neurologists—above all Weygandt—had spoken out in favour of a boycott of clinics where psychoanalysis was practised (see Jones, 1957: p. 116; the reports in the Hamburger Ärzte-Correspondenzblatt, 4 April 1910, and the Neurologisches Centralblatt, 1910, 29: 659–662).

90A

Berlin
20 June 1910

Dear Professor,

Our letters crossed the last time. I was sorry to see from yours that your health was giving you cause for complaint. I hope that is now over. Where are you going in the holidays? I am staying here this summer. My wife is expecting in August, and we are moving in September. I have now been away for a week, not, indeed, for pleasure, but as expert witness in a lengthy judicial hearing in a little town in Westphalia.

I have good things to report of our little circle. Stegmann came over from Dresden for the second session. Körber talked about a case he was analysing—incomplete, it is true. Even if he has not yet grasped the subtleties, he is a straightforward, reliable person who will support the cause if need be. Next time Eitingon is to talk about the critical objections of our opponents; Hirschfeld speaks on symbolism in fetishism. After the summer holidays we want to organize an autumn session in Dresden—at Stegmann's suggestion—in order to mobilize the interested people scattered about Central Germany a little more.—The colleagues return your greetings sincerely.

As I conclude from the Circular, the difficulties in Zurich are still going on. It must surely be about Bleuler? I have not heard any details yet, though.—The fact that the Interpretation of Dreams is coming out in yet another edition is a particularly clear sign of progress. The Jahrbuch is far too unpunctual this time!

I am working on Segantini, but the practice has recently become so lively that I have only little spare time. I have plans for so many new subjects to work on that I should be glad to have a few weeks to spend only in writing.

To amuse you, I am sending you with this a new effort by Hellpach1 out of the Tag. The underlined passage shows clearly the correctness of the tactics followed up to now.

With cordial greetings from house to house,

your devoted

Abraham

1. Willy Hellpach [1877–1955], German physician, psychologist, and politician. Contributions to medical, ethnic, social, cultural, and religious psychology. His attitude towards psychoanalysis was characterized by a mixture of approval, rejection, and misunderstanding.

91F

Vienna IX, Berggasse 19
3 July 1910

Dear Doctor,

Many thanks for the good news from your circle, which is small but perhaps particularly distinguished by reason of its homogeneity and unity. In Zurich there really are difficulties, with Bleuler at their centre. They do not want to join the Society, and attend the meetings only as guests. I cannot envisage how this should work out at the next congress. Of course I am also not fully in the know. I hear from Jung that Binswanger, who is now the president, is standing by the dissidents.1

Hellpach's prattle was soon put in the shade by Hoche's profound performance.² These are really valuable signs of the uneasiness in which our opponents are floundering. The reviews in the new Zentralblatt will in all such cases be strictly unemotional, plain, and laconic, at least as far as my influence³ can reach.

The Jahrbuch is really behaving carelessly. The next issue of the Sammlung [Schriften] will be Pfister's study on Count Zinzendorf.⁴

About us personally I can say that all of us are already very tired of the city. As we have nothing as delightful as you have to look forward to in August, we are already longing for 15 July. But so far we have no idea where we shall turn to until 1 August, the day on which our lodgings in Noordwijk (near Leiden) will be ready. My bowels have improved, but there is no time for real well-being now.

If you write to me, go on using my address in Vienna until I can give you another.

I have received the first review of the Leonardo, Havelock Ellis in the Journal of Mental Science,⁵ friendly as always. It [Leonardo] pleases all our friends and will, I hope, disgust all outsiders.

In the year that is now ending,⁶ America stood out above all. Let us now seek some rest and refreshment against the hardship of the next.⁷

With many congratulations to your dear wife,

and cordial greetings,

Yours,

Freud

1. It had proved difficult to find a president for the newly constituted Zurich branch society. Finally, Binswanger declared that he would accept the vote, but only if all meetings were open to non-members. Despite Jung's opposition, the vote went through (Jung to Freud, 17 June 1910, Freud & Jung, 1974 [1906–13]: p. 329).

2. Alfred Hoche [1865–1943], professor of psychiatry at Freiburg im Breisgau, one of the bitterest opponents of psychoanalysis among the German psychiatrists. At the Congress of South-West German Psychiatrists, 28 May, he had spoken on “An Epidemic of Insanity among Doctors” (Hoche, 1910) and railed against the “strange medical frenzy movement” of psychoanalysis, from which one should “dissociate oneself most emphatically”.

3. On Adler and Stekel, the editors.

4. Pfister, 1910. Graf Ludwig von Zinzendorf [1700–1760], German religious reformer, leader of the “Moravian Brethren” sect. In his monograph, Pfister related Zinzendorf's religious fanaticism to perverse eroticism.

5. Havelock Ellis [1859–1939], pioneering British sexologist; author of Studies in the Psychology of Sex (6 vols., 1897–1910; suppl. 1928). He concluded his otherwise rather critical review (Ellis, 1910) by saying: “if…Freud sometimes selects a very thin thread, he seldom fails to string pearls on it, and these have their value whether the thread snaps or not”.

6. That is, the end of the working year.

7. On 17 July Freud and his sons Oliver [1891–1969] and Ernst [1892–1970] went to The Hague; on 1 August they went on to Noordwijk, a Dutch seaside resort, where they were joined by the other family members, who had come from Hamburg. Only Minna Bernays had stayed in Hamburg with her mother, Emmeline Bernays, who was fatally ill; she died on 27 October.

92F

Noordwijk
22 August 1910

Dear Friend,

I must take your latest piece of work¹ as an opportunity to congratulate you heartily on all the contributions you render to the cause of psychoanalysis. I do not know of anything to place beside them for clarity, inner solidity, and power of evidence. I am convinced that that is the impact on all readers on our side. The others, with Ziehen at their head, may see for themselves how they cope with them.

My stay in N., where I have not been able to work at all, is nearing its end. Dr Jones, who was my guest for two and a half days,² shook me into action a little. I heard from him, and by letter from Putnam, that the American group will come into existence.³ Ferenczi, with whom I shall be travelling during the whole of September, arrives here on the 27th. We want to see a few towns in Belgium and then travel by way of Basle and Rome to Sicily. We will do much work on Ψα then. I am greatly looking forward to it, because I am already taking the idleness badly.

Be so kind as to send me the expected domestic news from your house by way of my wife, who is staying in Holland until about 15 September. On 1 October I go back to work, to which one becomes reconciled again after a long break.

On the whole, I think, our cause is going very well, and is no longer for my four eyes only.⁴ Progress will now be more difficult, however, the surface has been creamed, the final, decisive results are perhaps not yet clearly visible, and defence is required not only against enemies but also against rash fellow-workers. But perhaps it is only I who have an impression of an unavoidable slowing-down, while there will come energetic advances from the younger ones.

I send my cordial greetings to you and your dear family,

Yours,

Freud

1. Abraham, 1910[17]; contained in the eagerly awaited Jahrbuch, which Freud had finally received on 17 August (Freud & Ferenczi, 1992: p. 205).

2. Around 11/12 August. A sister of Jones's common-law wife Loë Kann had a house in Noordwijk.

3. Putnam's letter (end of July, 1910) in Hale, 1971b: pp. 102–104. The American Psycho-analytic Association was founded on 9 May 1911.

4. Perhaps a play on the German saying “unter vier Augen”—something should be said, kept, etc., “among four eyes only”—that is, between two people only.

93A

25 August 1910

Dear Professor,

Many thanks for card¹ and letter! Your appreciative words gladdened me very much. I hope to be able to justify your good opinion through two more works in the course of this year. Fetishism (from Nuremberg) is to appear in the next half-yearly volume; if only I could finish Segantini off too in the next few months. It could then be printed before Christmas.

I will spare you the promised scientific communication for now; I did not know that you would be leaving Holland so soon. I now wish you a very enjoyable journey. The expected event has not yet happened but is very near. I will eventually inform your wife, to whom I ask you to give my best wishes, and also to the rest of your family, including our colleague Ferenczi.

The quietest time for the practice is already over. Since the beginning of this week there has been quite a great deal to do. I am not going to be able to go away this year, but instead at the beginning of October I have the pleasure of the Neurological Congress here.² Oppenheim and Hoche are preaching on anxiety states. The latter in particular will give it straight from the shoulder. Why journey to Sicily if one can see them in Berlin—la Maffia neurologica!

With kind regards,

your cordially devoted

Abraham

1. Missing.

2. Fourth Annual Meeting of the Society of German Neurologists, Berlin, 6–8 October 1910 (see letter 95A, 18 October 1910).

94F

Noordwijk
30 August 1910

Dear Friend,

I am still just in time to send you myself my hearty congratulations on the birth of your son1 and on the completion of your fatherhood, and to express my sincere hopes for the young mother's rapid recovery. Tomorrow morning, then, off to Paris to have a look at the Leonardo,² then on to Italy.

Your most faithfully devoted

Freud

1. Abraham's son, Gerd, later emigrated to London; forced to change his profession, he joined the British Army and fought during the war in India, then returned to London.

2. Leonardo's St Anne with Two Others in the Louvre, reproduced and interpreted in Freud's essay (1910c: pp. 111ff). Freud probably wanted to see the original to check Pfister's idea that the outline of a vulture can be seen in the white cloth around the body of Mary. (Cf. Freud, 1910c: pp. 115f., addition 1919; Pfister, 1913.)

95A

Berlin W., Rankestrasse 24
18 October 1910

Dear Professor,

I have left your kind congratulations on the birth of our son and the various postcards from your journey¹ unanswered until now. It has been a somewhat unsettled time for us. We are established in the new apartment, and I can think again about things other than worries about how to furnish it. There has unfortunately been a break of several weeks in my writing; Segantini will therefore be late—I hope not too much so.

The two congresses are over for good. One as sterile as the other. Just that the neurological one was more vicious. Oppenheim's talk on anxiety did not contain anything that could not be found in any popular article. It was in fact merely the frame for a long-suppressed outburst of affects. O. went so far as to call for a boycott of those sanatoria that use Ψα. Hoche, as discussant, was boring, nothing else. The discussion consisted mainly of a number of directors of sanatoria getting up and solemnly declaring that they did not practise Ψα. At their head Herr Friedländer, your special friend! Otherwise, only Raimann² from Vienna distinguished himself, who proposed, as Freud was evading a discussion, to seek out the enemy in his own camp (sic!) and—to make public every failed case of a psychoanalytic treatment. Boycott and denunciation. I find that the unpleasant signs are mounting up in a most gratifying way. We, the heretics in attendance (Koerber, Warda, and myself), remained silent. I need hardly mention that the jocular speeches at the banquet essentially had just one target. One evening there was a big reception at Oppenheim's. On this occasion Aschaffenburg3 pounced on me and used me for quite a long time to let his affects loose on me. He is more intelligent than most of the other opponents, and after the resistances had faded away he became considerably more approachable. I can certainly say that the debate, which lasted about three hours, was not without its effect. Finally, he told a few tales out of school. He thought it possible that “the three psychopaths”, Gaupp, Wilmanns,⁴ and Isserlin,⁵ would change sides one day. I do not know whether he is right. Wilmanns would be very valuable. I know him from Bremen, our hometown, and know him to be a person who thinks independently.

As regards Oppenheim's resistance, I want to add in confidence that his wife suffers from severe hysteria and has given him a great deal of trouble the whole of this year, and that he himself had a severe neurosis with an anxiety state two years ago. This makes the recent intensification of his emotions indeed understandable.

Now I must tell you about Bleuler, who spent hours with me in order to abreact. You are familiar enough with his complexes. Naturally, he justifies his staying away from the Society with various scruples, for which he does not find the real motives, even with a great deal of help. All the same, I have a number of things to say in his favour and should like to ask you, dear Professor, whether it would not be appropriate now to meet him halfway, in order to make good certain mistakes and to serve our cause. I have talked much psychoanalysis with Bl., and I must say that he is taking a keen interest in the cause. During the congresses he had many discussions with Kraepelin,⁶ Aschaffenburg, and others, and they all considered him, as I personally heard, a really convinced partisan. I believe his service to our cause in this respect more than outweighs the occasional harm he may have done to it by being too reserved. And, finally, the main point: both before and at the time of the founding of the Zurich group, Bl. was very obviously grossly insulted. You know that I am quite critical of Bl.; but if one makes it a principle in Ψα not to insult the complexes, why should one behave differently towards Bl., of all people? Bl. wants a rapprochement. He is at odds with himself and suffers from it. Should not there be a way to come to an understanding?

And now, an encouraging symptom. I think it was Aschaffenburg who told me that on a journey through America the first question asked by all the physicians was: What do you think about Freud?⁷

I find our Jahrbuch II.1 really excellent.—Incidentally, more and more topics are accumulating that I would like to discuss with you. Starting from the antithetical meaning of primal words,8 one could surely proceed further. In particular, the question of bisexuality in language would have to be investigated.

But I do not want to go any more into scientific matters today.

With cordial greetings from house to house,

your devoted

Karl Abraham

1. Missing.

2. Emil Raimann [1872–1949], professor of forensic psychiatry at the University of Vienna, an outspoken opponent of Freud's. He was anonymously mentioned by Freud in his “History of the Psycho-Analytic Movement” (1914d: p. 23; cf. Raimann, 1916).

3. Gustav Aschaffenburg [1866–1944], German psychiatrist. Professor at Heidelberg, Halle, and Cologne. In 1939 he emigrated to Baltimore. Author of numerous polemical articles against psychoanalysis.

4. Karl Wilmanns, German psychiatrist.

5. Max Isserlin [1879–1941], German neurologist; at that time, Kraepelin's assistant in Munich.

6. Emil Kraepelin [1856–1926], Professor of Psychiatry and Neurology at Heidelberg and Munich [1903–22], doyen of German psychiatry, author of an extremely influential textbook (1883).

7. Italicized words in English in original.

8. Freud, 1910e, in the Jahrbuch referred to.

96F

Vienna IX, Berggasse 19
24 October 1910

Dear Friend,

You have made up for the long interval by an unusually substantial letter. Cheers to the new home! How is your son thriving?

I am sorry for Opp.[enheim], a good inept man. Why does he have to fixate himself on anxiety, of all things, just to make a fool of himself in the eyes of a later generation. Ψα really has many other points on which it is assailable. I am keeping secret your explanations about his personal motives. I do not really believe in these conversions; Aschaffenburg, however, would certainly do me a great personal favour if he were to give some meaning in retrospect to his “promise/slip of the tongue” at the Amsterdam Congress.¹ Friedländer is a mendacious dog, who is not worth talking about. Perhaps Raimann will really get a rap over the knuckles before long; but perhaps I shall feel that it is not worth the trouble.

Now to Bleuler. I had decided to get in touch with him (“to make nerve-contact² with him”) even before your letter, and since then I have been in continuous correspondence with him, the individual items running to 8–10 pages.3

Things are as you say. His arguments are shadowy and intangible, everything is full of alleged imponderables, and yet he seems unshakeable. I have promised him to go to Zurich over Christmas if he will give me a chance to settle matters. I have of course no intention of sacrificing the Society as such. Its foundation was too well justified. Incidentally, it was he, Bl., who first expressed the wish for a personal discussion.

The Zentralblatt arrived here yesterday. I hope it will make its way, though the editorship⁴ may not yet have discovered all the technical mysteries of the trade. There is already a plethora of material for the next few issues, so we are forced to make contributors wait.

I am in the thick of work and have penetrated somewhat more deeply into paranoia along the path on which you have stepped.

I shall keep you informed how things proceed with Bl. as we go along. He has offered that I read his apologia⁵ in proof in order to suggest changes that suit me better, but naturally I am declining.

With cordial greetings to your wholly new and full house,

Yours,

Freud

1. A play on the German word “Versprechen”, which can mean both “promise” and “slip of the tongue”. At the First International Congress for Psychiatry, Psychology, and the Assistance to the Insane (Amsterdam, 2–7 September 1907), Aschaffenburg had “made two slips of the tongue in his lecture (‘facts' [of psychoanalysis] instead of ‘no facts’), which shows that unconsciously he is already strongly infected” (Jung to Freud, 4 September 1907, Freud & Jung, 1974 [1906–13]: p. 83).

2. Nervenanhang, an expression from Schreber's neologistic “basic language” [Grundsprache] in his Memoirs (Schreber, 1903, Ch. 1), with which he described God's way of getting in contact with human beings.

3. Excerpts from this correspondence were published by Alexander and Selesnick (1965). The Bleuler letters are now accessible in the LOC, those by Freud are in the possession of the Bleuler heirs.

4. Adler and Stekel.

5. Bleuler, 1910.

97A

Berlin
14 December 1910

Dear Professor,

Today Eitingon brought me your greetings.¹ He did not need to remind me that I owed you a letter. I postponed writing because I wanted to send you my letter in the company of the Segantini. This latter, however, is very resistant to analysis—hence the delay. As I cannot, after all, send you the manuscript before Christmas, you should at any rate receive some sign of life.

The subject is really unusually difficult but I do believe I have by now solved all that is accessible to solution, and now there remain only the last two chapters to write.

I hear that you will be meeting Bleuler soon, and I am calmly awaiting the result. A pity your journey does not take in Berlin. A great number of questions have accumulated about which I should like to talk with you.

Our group is doing well. Juliusburger and Koerber have familiarized themselves very much with the work. The latter recently contributed some dream analyses that astonished me. Unfortunately we have no young blood. In any case, medical Berlin is taking more and more notice of Ψα, if only in a hostile way. A few stupid criticisms have appeared again in the journals, the most stupid of which is by Näcke.2 The pro literature is growing to uncanny dimensions. Jones has given birth to quintuplets yet again, which he sent me.

As regards scientific matters, I only want to tell you today that I have analysed two cases of so-called cyclothymia³ to quite a large extent, which, together with one other investigated previously, provide very good insight into the character of this illness. Unfortunately, I have only seen all three patients in their depressive states and know of the exalted ones merely from retrospective description. All the same, I believe I have come near to the understanding of the manic flight of ideas.

I have been very satisfied with the practice this last year. In comparison with the previous year, there has been distinct progress. Only the fluctuations are still too great. But the successes were very gratifying.

May I send you the manuscript when I have it ready, or shall I—as you are going away for Christmas—wait until the New Year? I do not want to lay a burden on you for your few days' holiday.

With cordial greetings from house to house.

Your devoted

Abraham

1. Eitingon had visited Freud around 6–8 December (Eitingon to Freud, 20 November 1910, SFC).

2. Paul Näcke [1851–1913], Russian-born German psychiatrist, director of an asylum at Colditz, Saxony. He published prolifically, with a special interest in sexual problems. Freud credited him with introducing the term “narcissism” (Freud, 1914c: p. 73). The criticism could not be identified; Näcke, however, had already written two rather favourable reviews of The Interpretation of Dreams and the Three Essays on the Theory of Sexuality (Näcke, 1901, 1906).

3. Manic-depressive illness.

98F

Vienna IX, Berggasse 19
18 December 1910

Dear Friend,

I am delighted to have heard from you again, and then something good and promising. The latter refers to your Segantini, which I would particularly like to read during the holidays. But do not rush yourself. I am hardly having a vacation; except for the two days of Christmas, every day is the same for me, and only Sunday a real holiday. Also, I would not be able to have it printed right away, because that is what is now happening to the German translation of Jones's study of Hamlet,1 and after that I have accepted a legal paper (the first) by a talented young Zuricher named Storfer.² But your Segantini will of course follow as soon as possible after that.

A meeting with Bleuler has been arranged in Munich,³ at any rate so far as I am concerned; I still have no reply from him. He is a strange customer. I am expecting to read his apologia this week in the Jahrbuch.

Our Zentralblatt would like to publish a nice contribution from you.

My own work, just finished, has dealt with Schreber's book and has tried, using it as a point of departure, to solve the riddle of paranoia. As you can imagine, I followed the path indicated by your paper on the psycho-sexual differences between hysteria and dementia praecox. When I worked these ideas out in Palermo, I particularly liked the formula that megalomania was the sexual overestimation of the ego. In Vienna I found that you had already said the same thing very trenchantly. I have of course had to plagiarize you very extensively in this paper.⁴

I think that I am able to clear up the difference between dementia praecox and paranoia also in the stricter sense of the word.

I should be delighted to discuss all these things with you again, but there is no respite from the necessity of earning money.

In America things are going very well. Brill has now translated the Theory of Sexuality too, and Putnam provided a superb introduction.⁵ That old gentleman is altogether a magnificent acquisition.

Your wife and progeny are very well, I hope?

Cordial greetings,

Yours,

Freud

1. Jones, 1910c, for the Schriften.

2. Storfer, 1911. Adolf (after 1938, Albert) Josef Storfer [1888–1944], journalist and writer of Romanian origin, studied philosophy, psychology, and linguistics at Klausenberg and Zurich, where he also began the study of law. He went to Vienna in spring of 1913 and later became the business manager of the Verlag [1925–1932]. He was co-editor of Freud's Gesammelte Schriften [1924–1934] until the penultimate volume and, until 1932, editor of the journals Die psychoanalytische Bewegung [1929–1933] and Almanach der Psychoanalyse [1926–1938]. After the Anschluss he fled to Shanghai and from there to Melbourne, Australia, where he died in poverty.

3. Freud had originally wanted to visit Bleuler in Zurich in order to convince him to join the Zurich Society of the IPA, and he would also have used this occasion to see Jung. In order for Freud not to have to meet Bleuler and Jung—between whom there was disagreement—simultaneously, Jung had proposed that Bleuler and Freud meet in Munich, where he himself arrived after Bleuler's departure.

4. It was Jung who had drawn Freud's attention to the Memoirs (1903) of the judge Daniel Paul Schreber [1842–1911]. Freud used the book to develop his theory of paranoia (Freud, 1911c [1910]). Two days earlier, Freud had written to Ferenczi that “this step in psychiatry is probably the boldest that we have taken so far” (Freud & Ferenczi, 1992: p. 243). The Schreber case is probably the one most often cited in the history of psychiatry—specifically, there is a growing literature critical of Freud's interpretations. (For the explanation of megalomania, see Abraham, 1908[11]: p. 75; Freud, 1911c [1910]: p. 65.)

5. Freud, 1905d, translated by Brill, under the title Three Contributions to the Sexual Theory (New York, 1910) (Putnam, 1910a).