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April 26, 19041
Dear Wilhelm:2
If I am writing to you again after such a long interval, you surely will assume that I am prompted not by an emotional impulse but by a practical motive. And so it is. I should like for us to hear about each other again in the following way: several competent young physicians
who — I do not want to be secretive with you — belong to the circle of my pupils plan in the near future to attempt publication of a scientific journal that will be devoted to the “biological and psychological exploration of sexuality.” They will ask you to collaborate, and, anticipating them, I should like to ask you not to deny them your name and your contributions. They believe the time is right, because everywhere the signs of agreement with my views are increasing. I recently found an absolutely stunning recognition of my point of view in a book review in the Münchener medizinische Wochenschrift3 by an official psychiatrist, Bleuler, in Zurich. Just imagine, a full professor of psychiatry and my † † †4 studies of hysteria and the dream, which so far have been labeled disgusting! It now no longer seems impossible that I shall myself still witness part of the change. I have never doubted the posthumous victory.
You must have received a work by Dr. Swoboda,5 of which I am in more than one respect the intellectual originator, though I would not want to be its author. Type: Gattel.6 But I believe that I am beginning to have better student material at my disposal.
I am of course looking forward as eagerly as ever before to the explanations you will give us in your new book.
With cordial greetings,
Your
Sigm.
This letter, and those of July 23 and July 27, 1904, were partially incorporated by Fliess into his pamphlet In eigener Sache. Published here for the first time in their entirety, the original letters are in the Jewish National and University Library, Jerusalem.