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‘If we turn back to the dream about the strange task set me by old Brücke of making a dissection of my own pelvis, it will be recalled that in the dream itself I missed the gruesome feeling [‘Grauen’] appropriate to it. […] The dissection meant the self-analysis which I was carrying out, as it were, in the publication of this present book about dreams – a process which had been so distressing to me in reality that I had postponed the printing of the finished manuscript for more than a year.’
On his return to Aussee, Freud gave Fliess, in a letter of August 20, 1898, an enthusiastic description of his trip to the Engadine (Maloja, Tirano) with Minna. The heat eventually became too much for them, and they cut short the excursions they had planned; the dreaded ‘paralysis’ which had lurked in the background of the ‘Count Thun’ dream reappeared: ‘A few days later, in Innsbruck, both of us were in a state of almost paralysing weakness’ (, August 20, 1898, 322). In the same letter, he referred to another writer – also recommended by Fliess – who now replaced Conrad Ferdinand Meyer: ‘Yes, I too have skimmed Nansen; my whole household is full of enthusiasm for him – for Martha, the Scandinavians (Grandmother, who is staying with us, still speaks Swedish) obviously revive a youthful ideal which did not materialise in her life; for Mathilde, who until now has been enthralled by the Greek heroes, the transition has been made