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3F
Hôtel du Lac
Lavarone (South Tyrol)
Lavarone1
26 July 1907
My dear Colleague,
Your letter2 is the first of scientific content that has followed me here into the holidays. It only increased my enjoyment, because it again bears witness to the advance of knowledge in the matter of dementia præcox and revives the prospect of the realization of long-restrained hopes. I reply to your rich offerings with only two remarks, which I have had in store for a long time, and which coincide so perfectly with what you say that I can let them merge with them.
It has struck me that patients, when they finally turn towards dementia and lose the resemblance to hysteria, hand over their (sexually infantile) phantasies without resistance, as if these had now lost their value, rather the way a person who has renounced marriage throws away the devalued keepsakes, ribbons, locks of hair, etc. The context in which I should like to place this behaviour also is that the essence of this turn [to dementia] lies in the withdrawal of the libido from the sexual object.
I have always assumed that in individuals formerly usually described as “idiopathic” [Originäre], and who later become obviously paranoid, the necessary development from auto-eroticism to object-love has only inadequately been achieved. With a proportion of cases of dementia this factor would supply the looked-for predisposition for the later illness, and that would fit in admirably with the general pathological view that illness always means regression in development. (The evolution and involution of English authors.3)
This is nearly the same as what you report, and this correspondence may strengthen anew your being forced to look at things in this way.