Letter from Oskar Pfister to Sigmund Freud, April 3, 1922

Zürich,
3.4.1922

Dear Professor Freud,

I had hoped to give you a little pleasure by sending you a new book, but now the pleasure is overshadowed by a great sorrow. Yesterday we lost our ablest analyst, Dr Rorschach.2 He died of peritonitis, and leaves a widow (herself a qualified physician) and two children completely without resources. He had a wonderfully clear and original mind, was devoted to analysis heart and soul, and threw in his lot with you down to the smallest details. His ‘diagnostic test’, which would perhaps better be called analysis of form, was admirably worked out. During the last three weeks I sent him three series of tests done with his blots, giving him only the age and sex of the individual concerned, and his diagnoses were excellent, though the cases were extremely complicated. One patient is a young girl who for years has been continually weeping and wanting to die and is totally incapable of work. From the tests Rorschach immediately diagnosed an obsessional neurosis with sadistic and confabulatory trends. This, as well as many other features of the case which he detected, was fully corroborated. He addressed the psycho-analytical society only a few weeks ago on the application of his methods to psycho-analysis (I hope his lecture will be printed). His intention was to become a university teacher. He was a poor man all his life, and a proud, upright man of great human kindness, and he is a great loss to us.