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Vienna, November 2, 1896
IX., Berggasse 19
Dear Wilhelm,
I find it so difficult to write just now that I have put off for a long time thanking you for the moving words in your letter. By one of those dark pathways behind the official consciousness the old man's death has affected me deeply. I valued him highly, understood him very well, and with his peculiar mixture of deep wisdom and fantastic light-heartedness he had a significant effect on my life.1 By the time he died, his life had long been over, but in [my] inner self the whole past has been reawakened by this event.
I now feel quite uprooted.
Otherwise, I am writing about infantile paralyses (Pegasus yoked)2 and am enjoying my four cases and especially look forward to the prospect of talking to you for several hours. Lonely, that is understood. Perhaps I shall tell you a few small wild things in return for your marvelous ideas and findings. Less enjoyable is the state of my practice this year, on which my mood always remains dependent. With heart and nose I am satisfied again.
Recently I heard the first reaction to my incursion into psychiatry. From it I quote: “Gruesome, horrible, old wives' psychiatry.” That was Rieger in Würzburg.3 I was highly amused. And, of all things, about paranoia, which has become so transparent!
Your book is still keeping us waiting. Wernicke recently referred a patient to me, a lieutenant who is in the officers' hospital.
I must tell you about a nice dream I had the night after the funeral.4 I was in a place where I read a sign:
You are requested to close the eyes.
I immediately recognized the location as the barbershop I visit every day. On the day of the funeral I was kept waiting and therefore arrived a little late at the house of mourning. At that time my family was displeased with me because I had arranged for the funeral to be quiet and simple, which they later agreed was quite justified. They were also somewhat offended by my lateness. The sentence on the sign has a double meaning: o