Letter from Freud to Fliess, June 12, 1900

Vienna, June 12, 1900
IX., Berggasse 19

Dear Wilhelm,

We have had family visitors. My eldest brother, Emanuel, arrived the day before Whitsun with his youngest son, Sam (who already is over thirty-five), and stayed until Wednesday evening.1 He brought with him a real air of refreshment because he is a marvelous man, vigorous and mentally indefatigable despite his sixty-eight or sixtynine years, who has always meant a great deal to me. He went on to Berlin, which is now the family headquarters, together with Dolfi, who had brought the New Yorker's (Anna's) three little girls to Vienna, from which they will go (this evening) with Rosa to Lake Ossiach for the summer. The three girls are thirteen, eight, and six years old and are charming children, real beauties, precocious like American girls, and very engaging. So occasionally one gets a good impression of one's family. Naturally, distress is not far behind. Pauline, the young widow, embarked on the Pretoria for Hamburg the day before yesterday(?).

Ernst has been ill again with a sore throat and fever for four days. His energy is inexhaustible. Even when he has a temperature of 38.5, he still shouts: “One could not possibly feel better; I want to get up.” The rascal becomes docile and compliant only when his temperature climbs to 39.5. This manic vivacity and wildness sometimes strike me as uncanny, like that of a consumptive.

Otherwise life at Bellevue is turning out to be very pleasant for everyone. The evenings and mornings are enchanting; the scent of lilac and laburnum has been succeeded by that of acacia and jasmine; the wild roses are in bloom and everything, as I too notice, happens suddenly.

Do you suppose that someday one will read on a marble tablet on this house:

Here, on July 24, 1895,

the secret of the dream

revealed itself to Dr. Sigm. Freud.2

So far there is little prospect of it. But when I read the more recent psychological books (Mach's Analyse der Empfindungen, 2nd ed., Kroell's Aufbau der Seele, and the lik