Sigmund Freud as a Consultant and Therapist: From Sigmund Freud's Letters to Edoardo Weiss1

The correspondence between Sigmund Freud and Edoardo Weiss shows Freud in the light of a psychoanalytic consultant. This aspect of Freud has rarely been described in detail and the recently published correspondence between Sigmund Freud and Karl Abraham2 shows little of such advisory activity, with the exception of one letter written to Karl Abraham early in the correspondence (January 9, 1908).

One of the first things which startles the reader of the Freud-Weiss correspondence in relationship to discussing technical aspects of psychoanalytic practice is Freud's outspoken and undisguised judgment between worthwhile and not so worthwhile patients. In the privacy of his correspondence Freud used sharp words, including the word “scoundrel”; and he was generally skeptical about the therapeutic efficacy of analysis in such cases.

Freud gave advice freely and generously from his immense clinical experience; for instance, he said: The patient who talks too much about his analysis prepares a betrayal or hostile exposure of analysis. At another time he explained with great kindness and patience, which characterized all of these letters to his younger colleague, that the therapist in question is perhaps too young in order to invite the necessary father transference. At all times Freud was very careful not to be overwhelming with his advice and whatever he said was meant “without obligation” to the recipient of the letters.

Freud was writing to a colleague so much younger—Edoardo Weiss was thirty-three years his junior—but he was always careful, almost protective and anxious to guard his student's self-respect.

Again and again Freud sounded a warning against excessive therapeutic ambition, impatience, or pressuring the patient. This does not necessarily indicate therapeutic pessimism. It seems to represent the general early European attitude of skepticism and guarded expectancy towards psychoanalysis or any kind of therapeutic approach as a method to treat mental illne