Chapter VI. The Cocaine Episode (1884-1887)

During the three hospital years Freud was constantly occupied with the endeavour to make a name for himself by discovering something important in either clinical or pathological medicine. His motive was not, as might be supposed, simply professional ambition, but far more the hope of a success that would yield enough prospect of private practice to justify his marrying a year, or possibly two years, earlier than he dared expect in the ordinary course. He must have been very prolific of ideas in his search and in his letters he repeatedly hints at a new discovery which may lead to the desired goal; in the event none of them did. Unfortunately he gives for the most part only tantalizing glimpses of what the ideas were. The only two he dilates on are the ones that brought him nearest to success: the gold chloride method of staining nervous tissue and the clinical use of cocaine.

As we shall see, the latter case was more than one of the routine efforts and the problems it raises merit the description of it as an episode.

Freud's own account of it runs as follows: ‘I may here go back a little and explain how it was the fault of my fiancée that I was not already famous at that early age. A side interest, though it was a deep one, had led me in 1884 to obtain from Merck some of what was then the little-known alkaloid cocaine and to study its physiological action. While I was in the middle of this work, an opportunity arose for making a journey to visit my fiancée, from whom I had been parted for two years. I hastily wound up my investigation of cocaine and contented myself in my book on the subject with prophesying that further uses for it would soon be found. I suggested, however, to my friend Königstein, the ophthalmologist, that he should investigate the question of how far the anaesthetizing properties of cocaine were applicable in diseases of the eye. When I returned from my holiday I found that not he, but another of my friends,