Letter from Freud to Fliess, June 9, 1896

Vienna, June 9, 1896

Dearest Wilhelm,

I could now say, our next congress is really superfluous because I have nothing to tell you, and what you intimate in your letter you want to tell me I already know. Before you recover from your astonishment, I want to convert the joke and become serious: I really have nothing to tell you (except, perhaps, the resolution of the story of Eckstein and her hemorrhages) and of your discoveries I knew only that you would make them; you did not surprise me; from the claw you showed me in Dresden I was able to form the correct picture of the structure of the future animal. In reality nothing will prevent me from looking forward to the detailed account of your findings as well as to seeing you again. Just a few weeks more; in the meantime I am working on the infantile paralyses and find life away from all that is dear to me very boring.

I did not have any discomfort on my special dates, but instead I am in a very dull period. Therefore I am not properly answering your question: tic and repression? For a difference between compulsion and effect of defense is dawning on me: the significance of the fact that anxiety develops when one tries to suppress the tic and the analogy between tic and hysterical symptoms of childhood from 8 years to puberty; that is, a double form of defense, one automatic and one psychic, initiated by the ego. But no clarity yet.

I do not at all share1 your astonishment that so far no one has noticed these things. My opinion of the mental capacity of homo sapiens communis has long been established, but does not really differ from yours all that much, does it?

Let yourself be further enlightened by R. W. and let me know soon that you, too, are having better days. That remains a dark shadow.