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Vienna, February 7, 1894
Dearest friend,
I too am so harassed at present that I am responding to your letter immediately so as not to leave it unanswered for too long. Your appreciation of the theory of obsessional ideas did me good, for I miss you the entire time I am engaged in this kind of work. If you come to Vienna in the spring, you must tear yourself away from the family for a few hours and devote them to an exchange of ideas with
me. I still have something in petto [in reserve] that is only just dawning on me. You saw that the last paper dealt with affect transformation and [affect] transposition; in addition, there also is substitution. I shall not lift the veil any further as yet.
You are right — the connection between obsessional neurosis and sexuality is not always all that obvious. I can assure you that in my case 2 (urinary urgency), it was not easy to find either; someone who had not searched for it as single-mindedly as I did would have overlooked it. In this case, which I came to know thoroughly during a fattening-up treatment of several months' duration, the sexual [factor] simply dominates the whole scene! — Your case of the disgusted and divorced woman is quite apt to yield the same result on closer analysis.
At present I am engaged in the analysis of several cases that look like paranoia and that have developed according to my theory. The book on hysteria I am doing with Breuer is half-finished; just a few of the total number of case histories and two general chapters are still outstanding.
At home, fortunately, all is well. The little one is turning out to be charming. Her rickets is far more severe than necessary. Breuer became a grandmother [sic] on February 3; the granddaughter looks fantastically like him.
I am calmer about your headaches since I received word from Scheffer [sic] in Bremen promising full recovery. I was so impertinent as to contact him directly. I do not know whether I have already written you that I will have to serve as the fi