Felix Gattel (1870–1904): Freud's First Pupil. Part I

The developmental continuity of organized psychoanalysis, of the Freudian school as a group, goes back to 1902. The date is known: it was the year of the foundation of the Psychological Wednesday Society. Before that, the collective self-image of the psychoanalysts consists solely of Freud, at most Freud with his friends and opponents.

With hindsight, this view is no doubt justified. However, it ignores the fact that Freud had genuine pupils even before 1902, although on a more informal basis, sporadically and without any lasting traces. The first of them, 1 and also the one whose apprenticeship with Freud is best documented, is the subject of this study. Freud mentions his name to Fliess for the first time on 16 May 1897 (FF, p. 244)2: 'I now have … a real pupil—from Berlin, a Dr Gattel'. An examination of Gattel's contact with Freud sheds some light on the characteristics of these early attempts at the formation of a psychoanalytic school and on the reasons for their failure. Whoever realizes the importance of illuminating initial cases for the progress of Freud's clinical ideas (Schröter, 1988, pp. 151–3), will find it worth while to take a closer look at this particular initial case in the field of psychoanalytic education.

Who was this man, Dr med. Felix Gattel?

Significantly enough it is harder to answer this question than it is to describe his relationship with Freud.3 We have recently come to learn a great deal about the latter, especially from a series of references in the complete edition of the Fliess letters (Freud, 1985), but our information about Gattel as a person is meagre and exiguous. He died in obscurity and nothing is known of any descendants; with one exception, no letters from him to more famous contemporaries appear to exist; nearly all the historical light that falls on him emanates from Freud, whose orbit he entered for a short period. Let us summarize the facts of his life which have hitherto been establish