Freud as a Psychoanalytic Consultant: From Some Unknown Letters to Edoardo Weiss1

Edoardo Weiss was born in Trieste on September 21, 1889. Weiss showed early an interest in the natural sciences and in his high school days already decided to study medicine, with a view to specializing in psychiatry. His first reading, in 1905, of Freud's “Die Traumdeutung” and “Der Wahn und die Träume in W. Jensen's Gradiva,” made a deep and lasting impression on him.

In 1908 he enrolled at the medical school of the University of Vienna. In spite of his awareness of the hostility among the leading professors toward Sigmund Freud's teachings, Weiss in early October 1908, visited Freud, who was then 52 years old, in order to ask his advice on how he could be trained in psychoanalysis. In his interview Freud inquired about Weiss' background and personal life. At this time, Freud was advising everyone intending to become a psychoanalyst to undergo a personal analysis, although until then not all of his few early followers had been analyzed. Therefore, he suggested Paul Federn, who had joined Freud's group in 1902, as the most appropriate analyst for Weiss. The association with Federn proved to be of decisive influence and significance for Weiss. The analysis itself lasted about eighteen months, and developed into a life-long friendship.

His training in general medicine lasted six years, and he specialized in neurology and psychiatry, which were then closely intertwined. Concurrently Weiss attended Freud's lectures, in addition to his regular course of medical studies. His teachers included such eminent figures as Frankl-Hochwart, Obersteiner, Marburg and Wagner-Jauregg. In 1913 Weiss became a member of the Vienna Psychoanalytic Society, presided over by Freud and attended all the Wednesday evening meetings.

At one of these meetings Freud presented for the first time his anthropological interpretation of totem and taboo, which later formed the basis of his classical work.

After the meetings Weiss would join a group of an