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8F
Prof. Dr Freud
Vienna IX, Berggasse 19
21 October 1907
My dear Colleague,
Seeing that you are in a humour for disputation, I will gladly answer your letter of 9 August.
I am in full agreement with what you say about dementia, that is to say, I have explained things to myself in a similar way without being able to find the confirmation in the material. I see dementia præcox only very rarely, and other cases of imbecility practically never. I can repeat in your own words that the dementia of dementia præcox must have a different mechanism than that of the senile, epileptics, etc. After all, it does not matter what tricks the psychiatrists play with the word. The dementia in dementia præcox must therefore be dissoluble (virtute!), a functional one, so to speak. Its prototype would be the unbelievable momentary stupidity that we observe in analyses when the insight we are looking for has to work against great resistances. The intellectual cathexis simply does not want to go where we wish to direct it. Given the reluctance to cathect the object that we assume in dementia præcox, the phenomenon must, naturally, turn out to be a much more impressive one. Another prototype—scientifically not usable—would be the highly remarkable stupidity that we are accustomed to finding in the arguments of our opponents, even of otherwise rather intelligent ones. Also just resistance.
But you now want to launch an inquisition into the term “dementia” itself and replace it, in the case of dementia præcox, by another, that of “inhibition of the personality”. Unimportant as such questions of definition are, in this matter I would rather not go along with you. Why? Who expects “dementia” to stand for anything other than a symptom that may occur under the most varied conditions (mechanisms)? It just means that the intellectual cathexis is not available for the necessary tasks. The term dementia is not meant to specify whether this is so because the intellectual cathexis is not there, or because it