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[Göttingen, middle of November 1927]
Dear Professor,
A few days ago a whole highly welcome human cargo arrived here from you—mother, daughter and father K … er. Now the parents have departed, the daughter has found satisfactory quarters and I want to tell you all about it.
After the preliminary consultation I allowed the mother to be present once more, so that she could get everything off her chest, and then not ask for any further reports from her daughter—and also so that I could get to know her myself. Cheerful, healthy people the parents, a regular family circle with seven children, all apparently bound to each other in respect and love, so that one is glad to think of the patient returning one day—cured, one hopes—to their midst. That is an important consideration. It is to be sure a strictly Catholic milieu, but there is some resistance from the younger generation against this. My patient had experienced her anxiety (in face of enclosed spaces, sudden attack, being forced to remain even in an open space, impression of being imprisoned) even before the shock which she told me about at once, i.e., the removal of her tonsils ten years ago by a rough and callous doctor. At an earlier stage she was similarly affected by dental treatments, and even snapshots of her as a little child show an apprehensive wee face. Although she is said to have been ‘wild’ in her physical movements, from infancy on she was very gentle and clinging. Her favourite position was, and almost for that matter still is, on someone's lap, even though such a position involves being completely ‘enclosed’ by enfolding arms. This same characteristic contradiction is confirmed by the fact that she has always fallen in love with doctors—with their ‘aggressive’ activity— and yet on the other hand only with the conflict-ridden waverers among them. She has even taken the precaution of becoming engaged to an obvious obsessional neurotic. I dare say we shall soon gain insights into her earliest phantasies of