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ON PAGE 426 OF THIS JOURNAL'S 1977 volume, the reader will find my second request to Professor Roazen for a meeting at which we could attempt to resolve a controversy which has arisen between us concerning certain aspects of Freud's life. In reading Professor Roazen's book Brother Animal, I had found many basic errors of fact which I discussed in Talent and Genius. However, Professor Roazen evidently saw no reason to change his views in any way. Therefore, I thought that a personal meeting might provide the most effective means of clarifying where the errors lie, since our disagreement concerned documented facts.
This second suggestion for a meeting also remained unanswered. In the following essay I shall summarize some instances which, in my opinion, prove beyond any doubt that Professor Roazen has been in error.
In his book Brother Animal(1969), Professor Roazen has given his version of the events that led to Victor Tausk's (1879-1919) suicide. Tausk was an eminently gifted pupil of Freud. He joined the Vienna Psychoanalytic Society in 1911. In 1918 he asked Freud to take him into psychoanalytic treatment. Freud refused and sent him to Helene Deutsch, who at that time was undergoing a training analysis with Freud. After three months she discontinued Tausk's analysis because it became incompatible with her own analysis. In July Tausk committed suicide.
Professor Roazen's book was well received by most reviewers and readers. Its convincing character was based on a few relevant, apparently fully documented, incidents. I shall examine in this essay Professor Roazen's documentation, disregarding the wealth of undocumented "missing links" with which his book is replete.