Published
p268-269 of The complete letters of Sigmund Freud to Wilhelm Fliess, 1887-1904. (Jeffrey Moussaieff Masson, Editor and Translator). (1985c). Cambridge, MA, and London: Belknap Press of Harvard University Press
Available www.LacanianWorksExchange.net /Freud
Further information
Preface, Note on Method & Introduction to ‘The complete letters of Sigmund Freud to Wilhelm Fliess, 1887-1904’ : 1985 : Jeffrey Moussaieff Masson. See this site /5 Authors A-Z (Masson or Index of Authors’ texts)
Citation
One of three mentions by Sigmund Freud of his hysteria in Introduction to Female Sexuality – The early psychoanalytic controversies : 1999 : Russell Grigg, Dominique Hecq & Craig Smith, see this site /5 Authors A-Z (Grigg or Index of Authors’ texts)
P16 of Grigg, Hecq & Smith, Apart from the question of femininity, there remains one riddle though. What was it that caused Freud’s blindness in the area of femininity, and more particularly his delay in recognizing the crucial mother-daughter dyad? Was this inadequacy dictated by Freud’s own masculinity and status as father, as, ultimately, he and others suggest, or by the phallocentric and patricentric nature of psychoanalysis as he conceived it,[30] by his self-diagnosed hysteria,[31] by his hysterical phobia as diagnosed by Didier Anzieu?.[32]
Footnote 31. See letters to Fliess of 14.9.1897, 30.9.1897 and 3.10.1897, in Letters to Fliess, 26l, 270 and 325.
NOTE This footnote is not correct.
Sigmund Freud notes his hysteria in three places :
14.09.1897 is not the date of a letter. p261 of Jeffrey Moussaieff Masson’s translation is 14th August 1897 Letter 67. See Letter to Wilhelm Fliess : 14th August 1897 (Known as Letter 67) : Sigmund Freud on this site /3 Sigmund Freud (18970814 or Index of Sigmund Freud’s texts)
&
30.9.1897 is p269 of Masson’s translation,
&
3.10.1897 on p325 ( Jeffrey Moussaieff Masson’s translation) is the 31st August 1898 Letter 95. (See this site /3 Sigmund Freud (18980831 or Index of Sigmund Freud’s texts) does not refer to Freud’s hysteria.
3rd and 4th October 1897 Letter 70 (This text)
Quotation
P268-269 of Jeffrey Moussaieff Masson’s translation, 3rd October 1897, There is still very little happening to me externally, but internally something very interesting. For the last four days my self-analysis, which I consider indispensable for the clarification of the whole problem, has continued in dreams and has presented me with the most valuable elucidations and clues. At certain points I have the feeling of being at the end, and so far I have always known where the next dream-night would continue. To put it in writing is more difficult than anything else for me; it also would take me too far afield. I can only indicate that the old man plays no active part in my case, but that no doubt I drew an inference by analogy from myself onto him; that in my case the , “prime originator”, was an ugly, elderly, but clever woman[1], who told me a great deal about God Almighty and hell and who instilled in me a high opinion of my own capacities; that later (between two and two and a half years) my libido toward matrem was awakened, namely, on the occasion of a journey with her from Leipzig to Vienna, during which we must have spent the night together and there must have been an opportunity of seeing her nudam (you inferred the consequences of this for your son long ago, as a remark revealed to me); that I greeted my one-year-younger brother (who died after a few months) with adverse wishes and genuine childhood jealousy; and that his death left the germ of [self-]reproaches in me. I have also long known the companion of my misdeeds between the ages of one and two years; it is my nephew, a year older than myself, who is now living in Manchester and who visited us in Vienna when I was fourteen years old. The two of us seem occasionally to have behaved cruelly to my niece, who was a year younger. This nephew and this younger brother have determined, then, what is neurotic, but also what is intense, in all my friendships. You yourself have seen my travel anxiety at its height.
I have not yet grasped anything at all of the scenes themselves which lie at the bottom of the story. If they come [to light] and I succeed in resolving my own hysteria, then I shall be grateful to the memory of the old woman who provided me at such an early age with the means for living and going on living. As you see, the old liking is breaking through again today. I cannot convey to you any idea of the intellectual beauty of this work[1] According to Sajner (1968), the woman’s name is Monika Zajic. Cf. Krtill 1979, p144). Sajner informs me, in a personal communication, that he has not been able to ascertain any particulars about this woman. When Freud says she was “elderly,” it is not clear if he is speaking as a child or as an adult. Anna Freud told me she thought Zajic may have been in her forties.
…
P270, 4th October. … (Neurotic impotence always comes about in this way. The fear of not being able to do anything at all in school thus obtains its sexual substratum.) At the same time I saw the skull of a small animal and in the dream I thought ” pig,” but in the analysis I associated it with your wish two years ago that I might find, as Goethe once did, a skull on the Lido to enlighten me. But I did not find it. So [I was] a “little blockhead” [literarily, a sheep’s head]. The whole dream was full of the most mortifying allusions to my present impotence as a therapist. Perhaps this is where the inclination to believe in the incurability of hysteria begins. Moreover, she washed me in reddish water in which she had previously washed herself. (The interpretation is not difficult; I find nothing like this in the chain of my memories; so I regard it as a genuine ancient discovery.) And she made me steal zehners (ten-kreutzer coins)[2] to give them to her. There is a long chain from these first silver zehners to the heap of paper ten-florin notes which I saw in the dream as Martha’s weekly housekeeping money. The dream could be summed up as “bad treatrnent.” Just as the old woman got money from me for her bad treatment, so today I get rnoney for the bad treatment of my patients.