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.
Vienna, May 2, 1891
Dear friend:
Of that reviewer and of the result I am indeed proud. I think that the thrust of the review will have contributed not a little to its success.1 In a few weeks, I shall afford myself the pleasure of sending you a small book on aphasia2 for which I myself have a great deal of warm feeling. In it I am very impudent, cross swords with your friend Wernicke,3 with Lichtheim and Grashey, and even scratch the high and mighty idol Meynert. I am very curious to hear what you will say about this endeavor. In view of your privileged relationship to the author, some of it will sound familiar to you. The paper, by the way, is more suggestive than conclusive.
What else are you doing apart from reviewing my work? In my case, “else” means a second boy, Oliver, who is now three months old. Shall we meet this year?
With cordial greetings,
Your
Dr. Freud
This is clearly a reference to a Fliess review of some piece by Freud. But no review by Fliess of any of Freud's work has come to light. It is possible that the review was written but never published, or that it was published in an obscure journal that so far has not been found. The Archiv für Kinderheilkunde contains a review of Freud's “Über Hemianopsie im frühesten Kindesalter” by a Herr Höltzke of Berlin, who mentions that the two cases Freud reported are the first noticed in the literature. But in view of the sentence at the end of the letter, it is unlikely that Freud is referring to a review by anyone other than Fliess.
The reference is to Freud, Zur Auffassung der Aphasien.
Carl Wernicke (1848-1905) was a prominent neurologist and psychiatrist often mentioned by Freud in connection with aphasia. He was also joint editor (with Theodor Ziehen, whom Freud also mentions in his letter of January 25, 1901) of the Monatsschrift für Psychiatrie und Neurologie, in which the Dora case, “Fragment of an Analysis of a Case of Hysteria,” was eventually published. Fliess may well have