On the Identity of Sigmund Freud's “Prima Donna”

In 1985, Masson translated and published for the first time a letter (original in Jerusalem), in which from Vienna, on July 12, 1892, Freud wrote to Fliess:

Your father kindly invited me to go with him to the Brühl.¹ I do not need to tell you that I willingly accepted. Everyone was again very cordial out there …. I shall now have more frequent opportunities to pass by the happy house because my prima donna² had just moved to the Brühl [my italics]. I am sure that I shall look in each time; it makes one feel so good. (p. 32)

In the first footnote, Masson indicated that “the Bondys, the family of Fliess's wife, lived in the Brühl, a valley just south of Vienna.” The second one reads: “This patient, whose identity is revealed to Fliess in a later letter, is the same woman whom Freud sent to Charcot (possibly to Bernheim as well) and who is called Cäcilie M. in the Studies on Hysteria [1893-1895]. See S. E. 2: 69n1” (my italics, p. 32n).

In a “later letter,” however, on November 27, 1893, Freud wrote: “My head misses the usual overwork since I lost ‘Mrs. von K.’ “(p. 61), which in effect, Masson identified as “Cäcilie M. of the Studies on Hysteria” (p. 62n), also informing readers that this sentence had been omitted in Origins () in the incorrectly dated letter of November 17, 1893. Then, on February 8, 1897 (in a part also presented by Masson for the first time), Freud mentioned her again: “If you knew Z. v. K. you would not doubt for a moment that only this woman could have been my teacher. You probably saw a sister-in-law of hers” (p. 229).

Evidently, Freud did not explicitly say that his “prima donna” was Mrs. von K. or Z. von K; thus it appears that unless Masson has other confirmatory data that were not revealed in his footnotes, he merely has made a speculative interpretation. (He credited Peter Swales for having called his attention to these letters [p. 30n].)