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Sometime during his middle teens, Freud learned Castilian and read in the original Cervantes' Coloquio de los perros (“The Colloquy of the Dogs”). He became very fond of this minor masterpiece of Spanish literature and was so attracted by one of its characters, Cipión, that he adopted his name and used it in the games he played with a school chum, Silberstein, who assumed the name of the other character, Berganza.
This fact has long been known to Freud's biographers, for in a letter Freud wrote to Martha in 18843a he tells of encountering this former school friend: “Wir lernten Spanisch zusammen,” and he relates that in their games they used “Geheimnamen” (secret names) which they took from a “Gespräch des grossen Cervantes.” The “Gespräch” is in fact the Coloquio de los perros, which Freud describes to Martha as a “humoristisch-philosophischen Dialog zwischen zwei Hunden.” Silberstein, in their private conversations and correspondence, was Berganza; “Ich, Cipion,” wrote Freud. Looking back, he mused, “Wie oft hatte ich nicht geschrieben: Querido Berganza!” and signed himself “Tu fidel Cipio, pero en el Hospital de Sevilla.”* This use of secret names, indeed, must have gone on