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Most limericks are ancient and have developed many variations. By way of a personal reminiscence, I would like to pin down one which, so far as I know, probably dates from the year 1922, according to a personal communication given me by the late Dr. Hanns Sachs, founder of the American IMAGO.
Dr. Sachs migrated to Boston from Vienna and Berlin about 1932. Nearly every summer he went back to Europe on vacation from his practice of Psychoanalysis in Boston to visit Freud in Vienna (and finally in England) until Freud died. I saw Dr. Sachs daily as an analysand for several years in the mid 30's. After that we saw each other socially and he told me several anecdotes about Freud, usually in reference to literary matters. For example, Dr. Sachs told me the following limerick:
Young men who frequent picture palacesHave no use for psychoanalysis;If you mention FreudThey are vastly annoyedAnd cling to their long-standing fallacies.
Sachs said Freud told him this limerick about 1936 or 1937 and Freud mentioned at the same time that an Englishman, then in analysis with Freud, had told it to Freud in the year 1922, at which time it was current in New York and London. This limerick is interesting in several aspects. First as a limerick and a good one at that; second, it contains a clever pun which amused Freud (according to Dr. Sachs Freud himself told it to several of his close friends with amusement); last, (Sachs said) it is a “good” limerick in that it is both witty and true.
Freud was interested in motion pictures, also the theatre