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Göttingen, 27.ii.1918
Dear Professor,
On this occasion the censorship almost relieves me of my scruples in replying to your letter at once, for it took no less than ten days to reach me from Vienna and my previous letter seems to have taken a good three weeks to reach you. Obviously we have offended in some way or other, both of us, only unfortunately I have no idea in what respect.
I should like to discuss with you this time—always assuming your indulgence towards such communications—something which kept going round in my head in connection with two cases of neurosis (an earlier one and one I am treating at present) with regard to your problem of the choice of neurosis.101 I am thinking of that case where a hysterical patient changed over to an obsessional neurosis under your very eyes (lecture 1913 and publication). Not that I have experienced that myself, but with the two patients of mine referred to above it was undoubtedly the case that in their childhood both women were definitely hysterical in their behaviour, whereas later (in their thirties and even much earlier) they were predominantly obsessional in character. Another remarkable similarity in their cases was the fate which befell their original hysteria: in both cases it was to a certain extent destroyed under every kind of threat and moral intimidation; it was neither cured, nor did it attain the appropriate neurotic development (e.g., in physical conversion-symptoms or in anxiety-states), because the reaction of their families against such symptoms was too strong.
I now had abundant material in both cases to provide me with the following conclusion: the habit of indulging in phantasy-experience instead of adjusting to reality, which had hitherto been practised involuntarily (even if under temporary difficulties or