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8 April 1914
69 Portland Court, London
Dear Professor Freud,
Thank you very much for your welcome, full letter. I am sorry that the news about Loe could not be better than it was. The left-sided pain must be hysterical. When the left kidney was last operated on, we had all the possibilities in our mind of torsion of the ureter, cicatricial tissue, etc., and could find nothing to account for the pain, though since then another stone may possibly have formed. It is an instructive lesson of the indirect organic effects of a neurosis. Hysterical retention of urine, cystitis from infection with the catheter, ascending pyelitis with calculus concretion around this, aided by intestinal toxins due to hysterical constipation.
Some day I should like to learn, for my own benefit, the reason for her hate of me. It preceded going to Canada, so could not have been due to any “unfaithfulness” on my part. I have always ascribed it to the miscarriage (confirmed by what she said in a hysterical delirium in Toronto) in spite of all her denials, and what you say about the relation of the mother to the alimentary canal seems to accord with this view; after that date I became her mother. Is this right?