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Burghölzli-Zürich, 11 August 1908
Dear Professor Freud,
I got your manuscript yesterday evening and hasten to thank you for sending it along so quickly. As soon as circumstances permit I shall set about reading it. I am very eager to learn, as I have a great need to see for myself how you treat each individual case. What we lack most is case material. I am never quite satisfied with my own, I always want to know how such cases turn out with other people. I have now read half of Stekel's book. The case material is invaluable. The incompleteness of his analyses is to be regretted, likewise his equally frequent neglect of the conflict, which seems to me far more important than the sexual troubles; these, as we know, can be endured for years so long as no conflict is piled on top of them. Some cases even show quite clearly that the symptoms arise not from sexual defects but from the conflict. (Case of the Jewish sausages!)1 I have read the book with pleasure because of the case material, otherwise with mixed feelings. Many of the interpretations are, or seem to be, very arbitrary; at any rate they are insufficiently substantiated. I would