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Freud's paper on Screen-memories (Ueber Deckerinnerungen, 1899), (9) contains a delightful and remarkable dialogue between Freud and “a man of thirty-eight, with academic training,” who had overcome “a slight phobia through psychoanalysis.” This former patient has a rare way of telling his story in a straightforward, concrete way, full of color, yet never detouring from and never obscuring the esssentials. His grasp of psychoanalytic values is so strong and clear; his knowledge of psychoanalysis is so great and his presentation so similar to Freud's that one would think one is reading a monologue were it not for the typography. But such a flash of some vague suspicion vanishes immediately into oblivion. The content of the memories of the man of thirty-eight and the interpretation which Freud gives with masterly ease so fully attract the reader's attention that distracting thoughts cannot grow above the threshold. Anyhow, the trained student of case histories feels obliged to suppress curious questions about the identity of a former patient.
I suggest that we relax this commendable habit in this case for the benefit of historical research and face the suppressed questions. Who, in 1899, had such vivid and profound understanding of psychoanalysis? Who wrote such clear, simple, distinguished and animated German in the nineties? Who is this interesting and promising man and what became of him? His personality seems familiar and one remembers to have read several of his memories somewhere else. Only after some deliberation one recalls the places and becomes convinced that the man of thirty-eight is no other than Freud himself, slightly disguised. If that be true then this case history contains the first information about an important period of Freud's life—otherwise completely unknown.