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Vienna, January 16, 1899
IX., Berggasse 19
Dear Wilhelm,
You will immediately have understood what occasioned this letter. My work and the sirocco made me so miserable that I went with the two women to “Ancora Verde,”1 seeking restoration in a bottle of barolo. I have just returned. All sorts of comfort come from the wine and so I am writing to you now.
If after ten hours of talking I were not so lazy about writing — as you can see from my uneven script — I could really compose a small essay for you about the minor advances of the wish theory, because since the 3rd of January the light has not gone out completely, nor the certainty that I have put my finger on an important nodal point. But perhaps it is better if I save and collect, so that at our Easter congress I shall not again stand before you as a poor beggar, enticing you with nothing but announcements of things to come.
A few other things of minor significance have yielded results as well — for instance, that hysterical headaches rest on an analogy in fantasy which equates the top with the bottom part of the body (hair in both places — cheeks [Backen] and buttocks [Hinterbacken; literally, hindcheeks] — lips [Lippen] and labia [Schamlippen; literally, shamelips] — mouth = vagina), so that an attack of migraine can be used to represent a forcible defloration, and yet the entire ailment once again represents a situation of wish fulfillment. The necessary conditions of the sexual become clearer and clearer.2 In one woman patient (whom I have set right with the key of fantasy)3 there were constant states of despair with a melancholic conviction that she was of no use, was incapable of anything, and so on. I always thought that in her early childhood she had witnessed an