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Vienna, October 9, 1898
Dear Wilhelm,
The well-being that shines forth from your letters does one good and communicates itself. Just watch how soon Paulinchen will turn out to be a reincarnation of your sister, although by her name you have aligned her with the other family.
My mood, critical faculty, subsidiary ideas — in short, all mental accessories — have been buried under an avalanche of patients that descended on me a week ago. Being hardly prepared for it and having been spoiled by the vacation, I felt at first as if I had been knocked flat; now I feel lively again, but have no energy left. All my strength is concentrated on my work with patients. The treatments start at nine o'clock — before that two short calls — and last until one-thirty; from three to five a pause for consulting hours, the office being alternately empty or full; from five to nine treatments again. I am definitely expecting another case — ten to eleven psychotherapies a day. Naturally, I am speechless and half-dead in the evening. But Sunday is almost free. I move things around, test them, and make changes here and there; I am not entirely without new leads. If I happen to hit on anything, you shall hear about it. Half of my patients now are men of all ages, fourteen to forty-five years.
Martha is better locally, but tired and does not look especially well. Throughout the whole summer there was a breakdown of intestinal activity, constipation, which occasionally ended in an explosive evacuation; at the end in Aussee and then on the trip. The colics occur more frequently and are more painful; her appetite is disturbed only during these periods; between them it is good. Her stool during the colic attacks is alternately hard, glassy, and diarrheic.