Schnitzler and Freud as Doubles: Poetic Intuition and Early Research on Hysteria

In an often cited letter from Freud1 to Schnitzler on Schnitzler's sixtieth birthday, Freud said he avoided the poet “out of a kind of shyness at the thought of seeing my double.”2 Freud continued,

Not that I am easily inclined to identify3 myself with another or that I want to disregard the difference in ability that separates me from you, but when I become absorbed in your beautiful creations I always believe I find behind the poetic appearance the presuppositions, interests, and results that are already known to me as my own.

Freud came across a work, possibly for the first time, that Schnitzler had written a quarter of a century before, and Freud was astonished “how much a creative writer knows about things.”4 Freud hardly realized at this point what sort of “presuppositions” and “interests” were hidden in this writer and easily ascribed them to that almost unlimited capacity which creative writers appeared to have, and because of which he offered the greatest reverence, even love, to them as to no other writers.5 Through “intuition,” Freud wrote further in that birthday letter, Schnitzler knew everything that