Letter from Sigmund Freud to Karl Abraham, February 17, 1918

334F

Vienna IX, Berggasse 19
17 February 1918

Dear Friend,

Yesterday my son Martin came home on leave from Tagliamento in “excellent shape”. Ernst is also here, but not at all well. Thanks to a general eczema, Oli has a rather long stay in a Galician hospital.1

I received a booklet from Germany a few days ago that is bound to be of special interest to you. I cannot send it to you, because I want it to be generally known here, but you will be able to get it easily. It is called “War Neuroses and Psychic Trauma. Their Mutual Relations, Presented on the Basis of Studies in Psychoanalysis and Hypnosis”2 by

Ernst Simmel, MD

at present senior physician of the L[Landsturm?] and doctor in charge

in a special hospital for war neurotics

With a preface by Dr Adolf Schnee Publisher Otto Nemnich, Leipzig—Munich 1918.

This is the first time that a German physician, basing himself firmly and without patronizing condescension on Ψα ground, speaks of its outstanding usefulness in the treatment of war neuroses and backs this with examples, and is also completely upright on the question of sexual aetiology. It is true that he has not gone the whole way with Ψα, takes essentially the cathartic standpoint, works with hypnosis, which is bound to conceal resistance and sexual drives from him, but he correctly apologizes for this because of the necessity of quick results and the large number of cases with which he has to deal. I think a year's training would make a good analyst of that man. His behaviour is correct.