You do not currently have permission to view the full text for this document. Please sign in to an account with an active subscription or contact support.
Burghölzli-Zürich, 11 April 1907
Dear Professor Freud,
Many thanks for your long and exceedingly friendly letter! I only fear that you overestimate me and my powers. With your help I have come to see pretty deeply into things, but I am still far from seeing them clearly. Nevertheless I have the feeling of having made considerable inner progres since I got to know you personally; it seems to me that one can never quite understand your science unless one knows you in the flesh. Where so much still remains dark to us outsiders only faith can help; but the best and most effective faith is knowledge of your personality. Hence my visit to Vienna was a genuine confirmation.
An excellent analysis I recently made of a Dementia praec. patient has recalled to my mind many of the things we talked about together. I would like to put one question before you which I am quite particularly racking my brains over. The structure of the case was altogether “hysteriform,” so much so that during the analysis I lost all consciousness of talking with a Dem. praec. patient. The rapport (transference) was excellent, so that I got the whole story out of her in one hour: nothing but sexual events dating back to the 6th year, all quite typical. The patient accepted the transposition1 with the greatest affect. Insight into the nature and origin of the illness became quite clear to her during the analysis, so that one might have expected considerable improvement. No sign of it the next day; can still come. Thus far everything would be just as it is in hysteria. But the patient has no “hysterical” associations. She reacts quite superficially, has the shortest reaction-times I have ever seen. This means that the stimulus words don't strike through to her affectivity, as they always do in