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27 October 1906, Vienna, IX. Berggasse 19
Dear colleague,
Many thanks for the new analysis. You certainly did not show too much reserve, and the “transference,” the chief proof that the drive underlying the whole process is sexual in nature, seems to have become very clear to you. As to criticism, let us wait until the critics have acquired some experience of their own before attaching any importance to it.
I have no theoretical objection to according equal importance to the other basic drive, if only it would assert itself unmistakably in the psychoneuroses. What we see of it in hysteria and obsessional neuroses can easily be explained by the anastomoses existing between them, that is, by the impairment of the sexual component of the alimentary drive. But I own that these are knotty questions that still require thorough investigation. For the present I content myself with pointing out what is glaringly evident, that is, the role of sexuality. It is possible that later on we shall find elsewhere, in melancholia or in the psychoses, what we fail to find in hysteria and obsessional neurosis.
I am glad to hear that your Russian girl is a student; uneducated persons are at present too inaccessible for our purposes. The defecation story is nice and suggests numerous analogies. Perhaps you remember my contention in my Theory of Sexuality1 that even infants derive pleasure from the retention of faeces. The third to fourth year is the most significant period for those sexual activities which later belong to the pathogenic ones (ibid.). The sight of a brother being spanked arouses a memory trace from the first to second year, or a fantasy transposed into that period. It is not unusual for babies to soil the hands of those who are carrying them. Why should that not have happened in her case? And this awakens a memory of her father's caresses during her infancy. Infantile fixation of the libido on the father—the typical choice of object; anal autoerotism. The position she has c