My First Visit to Freud in Vienna

In the spring of 1906 I passed my state medical examination, and in June of the same year I joined the ‘Burghölzli’ in Zurich as a trainee physician. During my clinical semesters, when Eugen Bleuler1 was already doing preliminary work on his Gruppe der Schizophrenien,2 which revolutionised the theory of dementia praecox, he had already aroused my admiration by his personality and caused my ‘hereditary’ love for psychiatry to blossom forth.3 I can still see him as he was then, scribbling notes at every opportunity on little slips of paper that he drew from his waistcoat pocket. Karl Abraham,4 my predecessor in the male section of the hospital, was rather reserved by nature, but he too was an influence on his younger colleagues because of his great intelligence and his subtle, often somewhat ironical personality. One of my fellow interns was H.W. Maier,5 who had been a friend of mine since schooldays. But it was C.G. Jung,6 then chief physician of the hospital, under whom I planned to write my doctoral thesis, who really fired me with enthusiasm. He kept his students constantly spellbound by his temperament and the wealth of his ideas. In 1906, in collaboration with Riklin,7 he had published the first volume of his Diagnostische Assoziationsstudien8 and had completed an epoch-making work