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19 December 1912
83B
Dear Professor Freud,
To come first to the F. case, it is indeed, as Dr. Haymann wrote in his letter of 20 November, imposible to determine a psychosis in this patient. At first we suspected - and this mainly under the influence of the husband's account - a form of dementia praecox, but that suspicion has not been confirmed in any way. We feel, however, that we cannot completely exclude the possibility of there having been a touch of hebephrenia, but, as I have said, we are lacking in clear clinical and psychological signs to diagnose that condition with certainty. To our mind, Frau F. is, apart from her Graves’ disease, a simple psychopath who just wants in her obstinate way to translate into practice the ideal of life she has constructed over the years, without appreciating the obstacles reality has placed in her path. Nor can we find any evidence of erotomania, the less so as her love for the gentleman in question has here taken second place to the divorce from her husband. The way in which Frau F.'s idea of a divorce has developed strikes us as being explicable in normal psychological terms. Frau F. married her husband, almost twice her age, when she was 17, without love and at the behest of her family, especially her mother. She had absolutely no understanding of marriage, but hoped that in due course the ideals she had nurtured in her teens would turn