Notes on Felix Deutsch as Freud's Personal Physician

To the average reader of Felix Deutsch's 1956 address to the American Psychosomatic Society, on the anniversary of Freud's 100th birthday, his account of Freud's mouth-cancer probably gave a dignified, deeply moving impression of Freud's courage in the face of physical suffering and of Deutsch's modest, self-effacing role in these unhappy events (Fig. 1). But exactly what took place between Freud as the patient and Deutsch as his physician may well have remained unclear and even confusing, because of omissions and ambiguities that reflected Deutsch's understandable conflicts about his decision to withhold the malignant nature of Freud's mouth-lesion until he felt it was “timely.” Some conflict might have been inferred from the many previous versions of his account of Freud's illness that Deutsch mentions, his decision to withdraw his 1949 address from publication (on the tenth anniversary of Freud's death), and his reference to Ernest Jones's forthcoming third volume of the Freud biography, as a kind of justification for presenting his remarks. Deutsch had already sent Jones his full correspondence with Freud, and yet, as we know from Jones and other more recent sources (Helen Deutsch's recollections, portions of Felix Deutsch-Freud correspondence and Max Schur's book), he leaves out the names of Freud's surgeons, [Marcus] Hajek and [Hans] Pichler, and a number of other details.

While some of Deutsch's omissions reflect a need to explain and justify his own actions as Freud's physician, there is a much stronger need to protect Freud from any possible criticism. Because of the contradictory nature of these needs, and the more powerful influence of his admiration for Freud, I believe that Deutsch has done himself an injustice and left an unclear impression of these events that lends itself to misinterpretation. A more detailed presentation would have allowed the facts to