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Forty-seven years ago Freud (1925) wrote about his psychiatric training: “I followed his [Brücke's] advice, left the physiological laboratory and entered the General Hospital as an Aspirant … and worked in various departments of the hospital, among others for more than six months under Meynert …” Though Freud was unenthusiastic about medicine, Meynert's lectures had been the only medical ones that had aroused his interest as a student. Working in Meynert's psychiatric clinic constituted Freud's chief purely psychiatric experience (Jones, 1953). Freud was assigned to Meynert's clinic from May I to the end of September, 1883; he spent two months in the male wards and three months in the female. The familiarity with psychiatric patients and their illnesses gained during these five months1 must have been of inestimable value for the future psychoanalyst. This brief communication is an attempt to reconstruct Freud's psychiatric experience, as far as is possible, on the basis of obtainable hospital records.2
The material upon which this report is based consists of forty-eight case records from the Allgemeine Krankenhaus in Vienna. These patient charts generally comprise an admission note, a brief history of the illness, a past history with special emphasis on family history, the findings of a physical examination, as well as an assessment of the patient's mental state.3 Sometimes additional information was obtained from the patients' families or other outside sources. Progress notes were recorded at irregular intervals. Abstracts of the decisions about diagnosis and the disposition made by the “Kommission” were included, as were face sheets summarizing the patients' vital