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Vienna, May 2, 1909
IX., Berggasse 19
Dear colleague,
In the turmoil and also as a consequence of the little bodily pains of recent months I have appreciated your interesting letters less than they deserved. Today, on a happy, rainy, and guest-free Sunday I will attempt to repair something.
I also know cases like the one you describe, if I correctly judge the similarity. I now have a woman who is recovering from syphilis and everything connected with it, but who, because of her own inaccessibility, her distinct arrogance, her endless evasive chatter, reminds me of your patient and probably belongs to the same type. I took her into treatment at the time because of hysterical symptoms, which could all be reduced to light organ disturbances and sensitivities. Everything in her speaks a displeasing albeit similar language to the one with which we are familiar, something akin to what happens when someone who knows Spanish is displaced to Portugal, where he can't actually make himself understood.
I can't give you any certain information. With my patient there is a slight chance of resolution through identification with a crazy [meschuggene] mother; great it is not. It also seems to me that these cases of paranoia can be pursued and perhaps find their representation in the querulist type; you correctly refer to the commonality with hypochondria. We have distinguished a paranoid subtype from the latter, hypochondria. The querulist would be a sublimated hypochondriac. We still know too little about this and must collect and learn, but there are certainly new, up to now misunderstood forms. We should hold fast to the idea that what we call different forms of illness are actually only different outcomes of the same process of repression and substitutive formation.—
My brother, who knows Schenker1 personally, has consulted with him regarding the cabins on the Laura and has received no answer as yet. I will report to you as soon as the matter is settled.
My daughter2 is doing very well