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Vienna, February 6, 1896
Dearest Wilhelm,
There has been an unprecedented hiatus in our correspondence. I knew you were occupied with Robert Wilhelmchen, neglecting nose and sex on his account, and I hope he is rewarding you by thriving. I have been toiling, going through one of my quarterly writing attacks, and have utilized it to produce three brief communications for Mendel1 and a comprehensive presentation for the Revue neurologique.2 Yesterday everything was sent off and, since no one else is doing it, I am applauding myself, am resolving to rest on my self-awarded laurels, and immediately am starting to write to you.
I have spared you the manuscript of the German article because it is identical with part of what I put before you as the Christmas fairy tale. I am terribly sorry that these latest new ideas (the real etiology of hysteria—the nature of obsessional neurosis—insight into paranoia) were spoiled for you by the way I presented them. Everything will be laid before you clearly at our private congress in the summer. I am going to Munich for the psychological congress, from August 4 to 7;3 will you make me a gift of those days? I am definitely not participating officially.
Annerl is splendid; Martha needed a long time to recover. Mathilde has been isolated with a light case of scarlet fever for the last week … So far no second case.
I simply can no longer get along with Breuer at all; what I had to take in the way of bad treatment and weakness of judgment that is nonetheless ingenious during the past months finally deadened me, internally, to the loss. But, please, do not say a word about it that might find its way back here.
Our book had a vicious review by Strümpell in the Deutsche Zeitschrift für Nervenheilkunde; on the other hand, it was the subject of a very thoughtful article by Freiherr von Berger in the old Presse on February 2, 1896.4
Now that everything must have run its course, we ask you for a few words about how your dear wife and my little friend ar