Preface to Wilhelm Stekel's Nervous Anxiety-States and their Treatment1

My investigations into the aetiology and psychical mechanism of neurotic illnesses, which I have pursued since 1893, attracted little notice to begin with among my fellow specialists. At length, however, those investigations have met with recognition from a number of medical research workers and have also drawn attention to the psycho-analytic methods of examination and treatment to which I owe my findings. Dr. Wilhelm Stekel, who was one of the first of the colleagues to whom I was able to impart a knowledge of psycho-analysis, and who has himself become familiar with its technique through many years of practice in it, has now undertaken the task of working over one topic in the clinical aspect of these neuroses on the basis of my views and of presenting medical readers with the experiences he has obtained through the psycho-analytic method. If I am glad to take the responsibility for his work in the sense which I have just indicated, I think it is only right to declare explicitly that my direct influence upon the volume on nervous states of anxiety which lies before us has been a very slight one. The observations and all the detailed opinions and interpretations are the author's own. My share has been limited to proposing the use of the term ‘anxiety hysteria’.2