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17 February 1910
Vienna IX, Berggasse 19
23F
Prof. Dr. Freud
Dear Dr. Binswanger,
Herr v. T. is due to due to start his year's military service in the autumn. It is not too early to take steps to obtain an exemption. We therefore ask you to let us have [an] impressive affidavit,1 presented with all due pomp and circumstance, concerning his stay at your clinic, in which his heredity should be stressed and everything else painted in the most sombre colours. I shall then send him with it to some of our official psychiatrists.
His condition, incidentally, has greatly deteriorated. I have already initiated moves to send him back to you. His mother's operation (total extirpation2) has had a particularly adverse effect. I would ask you to expedite the affidavit and to send it to him direct.
— Young M.3 has turned out to be a dementia praecox case and his family are unable to afford a clinic.
With kind regards to you, your wife and your father,
Yours cordially,
Freud
Such an affidavit has survived only from the second period as an in-patient from 16 April 1910: ‘Herr J. v. T. has been in our sanatorium since the 10th inst. for the second time. The patient is again suffering from melancholic depression, which manifests itself in an explicit inhibition from any expression of will, a slowing down of thought processes and an impoverishment of the content of his thoughts;