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Göttingen, 15.3.1923*
Dear Professor,
Today I am enclosing in my letter to Daughter-Anna a request for your advice about a patient of mine who has just left me. His analysis lasted for a bare three months. For business reasons it was
clear from the start that a longer period would not be possible, at least for the present. Now the analysis as such is actually completed, thanks to very concentrated work with this highly intelligent patient, who displayed remarkable honesty, determination and co-operativeness.
But one of his symptoms (conversion hysteria: abdominal troubles, which had formerly culminated in pain and vomiting) has been succeeded by ‘sensations’ of a vague kind, even though his psychical state is now one of complete inner freedom. The symptom itself was not one of the oldest or most deeply rooted, as had been, for instance, some severe anxiety-hysterical symptoms, but was scarcely two years old. It appeared in the course of the analysis just where the unfolding of the memories stopped at this nodal point, and did not then, as was usual with him, disappear in order to return after a few days, but from then on submitted itself uninterruptedly to the treatment, allowing us to unravel one knot after the other. My worry now is whether these vague residual sensations might not give rise to renewed complications, whether the organ should not first have been entirely free of all symptoms. My patient lives in Königsberg, and since I shall probably find myself there in the autumn (Anna will have told you about this), it might be possible to continue his analysis there.
I cannot refrain from relating to you something about the above symptoms which seemed to me of interest. In other respects this patient has nothing of the hysteric about him, and several of his character traits as well