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Vienna, December 29, 1897
Dear Wilhelm,
Back home and in harness again, with the delicious aftertaste of our days in Breslau. Bi-bi [bisexuality-bilaterality] is ringing in my ears, but I am still feeling too well for serious work. The first third of the paper for Paschkis is already done, a Gartenlaube essay, no more than that.1
Otherwise I am resolutely tramping along in the Dreckology2 A little interpretation came my way in the very first days [after I returned]. Mr. E., whom you know, had an anxiety attack at the age of ten when he tried to catch a black beetle, which would not put up with it. The meaning of this attack had thus far remained obscure. Now, dwelling on the theme of “being unable to make up one's mind,” he repeated a conversation between his grandmother and his aunt about the marriage of his mother, who at that time was already dead, from which it emerged that she had not been able to make up her mind for quite some time; then he suddenly came up with the black beetle, which he had not mentioned for months, and from that to ladybug [Marienkäfer] (his mother's name was Marie); then he laughed out loud and inadequately explained his laughter by saying that zoologists call this beetle septem punctata, or the equivalent, according to the number of dots, although it is always the same animal. Then we broke off and next time he told me that before the session the meaning of the beetle [Käfer] had occurred to him; namely: qué faire? = being unable to make up one's mind3 … meschugge!
You may know that here a woman may be referred to as a nice “beetle.” His nurse and first love was a French woman; in fact, he learned to speak French before he learned to speak German. You will remember our discussions about the use of the words “to stick into,” “toilet,” and the like.
My second and last lecture on the dream is over and was acclaimed enthusiastically by the Jews. Afterward an eager member of the audience asked me whether completely senseless dreams could be interp