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In my psychoanalytical practice, I have become aware that letters from the past both affect the present and shape the future. I keep letters from one of my cousins, letters that he wrote to his mother from the front in 1944 during the Continuation War, one of the two wars fought between Finland and the Soviet Union during the Second World War. In his letters, he asks about the harvest, about the horses and the cows, of course also about his relatives. My cousin died at the age of 19 after being injured by a mine. Even though I never met him — he died before I was born — his destiny has affected my life.
During my childhood, I stayed with my aunt — his mother — during the summers. I remember her agony; I remember her crying and shouting desperately every night. I also know that his letters and his death do not reveal all the reasons for her agony. My aunt was never married. To be able to work as a midwife, she let her child be brought up by her own parents. They already had twelve children and he became number thirteen. My grandparents treated him as their own child;. many times his mother neglected him. All my relatives were aware of these circumstances, but nobody talked about them. Afterwards, one can say that I sensed a family history that was a semi-lie. This part of the history cannot be found in any documents but is inscribed in my mind.
A large part of the history of psychoanalysis also cannot be found in official documents, not even in personal letters. It is inscribed in the minds of analysts, as well as in the minds of their analysands. This makes the history of psychoanalysis so interesting and also clinically relevant since we need to both identify and analyse the semi-lies existing in our professional field, lies or narrative truths that blur our understanding of the present.
Returning to the early history of psychoanalysis, Jaap Bos and Paul Roazen (2007), in this volume, examine the letters between Stekel (1868-1940) and Freud. Stekel was a disciple of F