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21 April 1910
Vienna IX, Berggasse 19
29F
[Freud to Alphonse Maeder]
Prof. Dr. Freud
Dear Doctor [‘Maeder’ added in Binswanger's hand],
Many thanks for your report on J. v. T. His enthusiasm for physical work is based, as you are aware, on the assumption that he has suffered - allegedly excessive - physical damage through masturbation. However, it is desirable that he retain something of that enthusiasm in later life. He only resisted the psychrophore because he doubted whether this method could be applied harmlessly in Bellevue. But now he has learned to trust you. I do not think the probe treatment can do him any harm; rather will it become a masturbation substitute, stop him from masturbating and eliminate the slight organic changes in the pars prostatica.1 Last year he continued to masturbate the whole time he was at the clinic. So please ask him about it!
Whether we can go on leaving him with you depends on whether he becomes used to ps[ychic]2 therapy with you. Here he would only be a nuisance to me. Incidentally, I have agreed a minimum period of 4-6 weeks with him.
His obstinacy considerably reduces his chances. He does not want to consider the alternatives open to him. He wants to be neither man nor woman, nor will he settle for guilt-free masturbation; he wants to be completely abstinent, although he might have learned by now that this resolve can only lead to masturbation, which he then hides from me, and which he manages to live with for a while thanks to a