What Is This Professor Freud Like - Koellreuter

KOELLREUTER

‘In 1921 a young female psychiatrist, Anna G, had the insight and courage to take
her problems from Zurich to Vienna for intensive psychoanalytic help. She asked Freud
to be her analyst and he agreed to help her with her difficulties and simultaneously to
train her as a psychoanalyst. The hard work demanded of both of them by this daily
treatment showed that the respect for each should have been, and was, mutual. Anna
Koellreuter deserves the same respect for the insight, courage and care with which she
WHAT IS THIS PROFESSOR FREUD LIKE?
has edited, commented on, and published her grandmother’s diary. It is a document
which, though as difficult as it is fascinating, can give any reader a much-needed
understanding of the importance of psychoanalysis.’ A DIARY OF AN ANALYSIS WITH HISTORICAL COMMENTS
—Juliet Mitchell, Professorial Research Fellow, University College, London; Professor
Emeritus, University of Cambridge


‘This remarkable diary of the analysis of Anna G with Freud in the spring of 1921
is unusual for two reasons. First, it is a lively document about Freud’s style before his
oral cancer, which made talking difficult and painful for him and most likely influenced
the manner and frequency of his interventions. Second, it reports on what might be
called a regular or personal analysis rather than a training analysis like those of other
published diaries during analysis with Freud. The commentaries aptly place the diary
in its historical context and shed light on Freud’s technique and on Anna G’s feeling
understood, despite the fact that modern techniques differ extensively from the one
described here. It should be read by all students of psychoanalysis.’
—Christian Maetzener, MD, training and supervising analyst, the New York
Psychoanalytic Society & Institute
‘Anna Koellreuter paints a moving portrait of a beloved grandmother and of Freud

as her consummate analyst. This is a fascinating and precious addition to the library
of memoirs left by former patients of Freud. We observe Freud’s style of analysing
and follow the spirited interchanges between doctor and patient. The story and the
commentaries by Koellreuter, Fallend, Falzeder, and Haynal will be a source of
inspiration and learning for psychotherapists of today.’
—Henry Zvi Lothane, Clinical Professor of Psychiatry, Icahn School of Medicine at
Mount Sinai, New York
ANNA KOELLREUTER is a psychoanalyst and clinical psychologist, and a member Edited by

of the Psychoanalytic Seminar in Zurich. Her publications are on the analysis of women
by women, on the female analyst in the analytic process, and on the dynamics of drives
in analysis.
Anna Koellreuter
THE HISTORY OF PSYCHOANALYSIS SERIES
Cover photographs courtesy of the author Series Editors: Professor Brett Kahr and Professor Peter L. Rudnytsky
ISBN 978-1-7822041-4-5
Routledge
www.routledge.com 9 781782 204145

The History of Psychoanalysis Series
Professor Brett Kahr and Professor Peter L. Rudnytsky (Series Editors)
Other titles in the Series
Her Hour Come Round at Last: A Garland for Nina Coltart
edited by Peter L. Rudnytsky and Gillian Preston
Rescuing Psychoanalysis from Freud and Other Essays in Re-Vision
by Peter L. Rudnytsky
Ferenczi and His World: Rekindling the Spirit of the Budapest School
edited by Judit Szekacs-Weisz and Tom Keve
Freud in Zion: Psychoanalysis and the Making of Modern Jewish Identity
by Eran J. Rolnik
Ferenczi for Our Time: Theory and Practice
edited by Judit Szekacs-Weisz and Tom Keve
The Clinic and the Context: Historical Essays
by Elisabeth Young-Bruehl
Sandor Ferenczi–Ernest Jones: Letters 1911–1933
edited by Ferenc Eros, Judit Szekacs-Weisz, and Ken Robinson
The Milan Seminar: Clinical Applications of Attachment Theory
by John Bowlby, edited by Marco Bacciagaluppi
Ferenczi and Beyond: Exile of the Budapest School and Solidarity in the
Psychoanalytic Movement during the Nazi Years
by Judit Mészáros
Looking Through Freud’s Photos
by Michael Molnar
Psychoanalytic Filiations: Mapping the Psychoanalytic Movement
by Ernst Falzeder
The Abandonment Neurosis
by Germaine Guex (translated by Peter Douglas)
The Life and Times of Franz Alexander: From Budapest to California
by Ilonka Venier Alexander
Freud and the Dora Case: A Promise Betrayed
by Cesare Romano
The Freudian Orient: Early Psychoanalysis, Anti-Semitic Challenge, and the
Vicissitudes of Orientalist Discourse
by Frank F. Scherer
Karl Abraham: Life and Work, a Biography
by Anna Bentinck van Schoonheten
The Skin-Ego
by Didier Anzieu, translated by Naomi Segal
A Forgotten Freudian: The Passion of Karl Stern
by Daniel Burston
Corresponding Lives: Mabel Dodge Luhan, A. A. Brill, and the Psychoanalytic
Adventure in America
by Patricia R. Everett
WHAT IS THIS PROFESSOR
FREUD LIKE?
A Diary of an Analysis with
Historical Comments
Edited by
Anna Koellreuter
Translated by Kristina Pia Hofer
Originally published in Germany as »Wie benimmt sich der Prof. Freud
eigentlich?«: Ein neu entdecktes Tagebuch von 1921 historisch und analytisch
kommentiert edited by Anna Koellreuter
First published 2016 by Karnac Books Ltd.
Published 2018 by Routledge

2 Park Square, Milton Park, Abingdon, Oxon OX14 4RN
711 Third Avenue, New York, NY 10017, USA
Routledge is an imprint of the Taylor & Francis Group, an informa business
Copyright © 2009, 2010 Psychosozial-Verlag, Giessen,

www.psychosozial-verlag.de
The right of Anna Koellreuter to be identified as the author of this work has
been asserted in accordance with §§ 77 and 78 of the Copyright Design and
Patents Act 1988.
All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reprinted or reproduced or utilised
in any form or by any electronic, mechanical, or other means, now known or
hereafter invented, including photocopying and recording, or in any information
storage or retrieval system, without permission in writing from the publishers.
Notice:
Product or corporate names may be trademarks or registered trademarks,
and are used only for identification and explanation without intent to infringe.
British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data
A C.I.P. for this book is available from the British Library
ISBN-13: 9781782204145 (pbk)
Typeset by V Publishing Solutions Pvt Ltd., Chennai, India

CONTENT S
ABOUT THE EDITOR AND CONTRIBUTORS vii
SERIES EDITOR’S FOREWORD ix
INTRODUCTION
The story of the diary xi
Anna Koellreuter
CHAPTER ONE
Diary of an analysis, April 1921 1
CHAPTER TWO
Illustrations 33
CHAPTER THREE
Being analysed by Freud in 1921—notes
about the analytic process 51
Anna Koellreuter
v
vi CONTENTS
CHAPTER FOUR
“Prof. Freud calls for tolerance!” Dashes that
moved the couch—and politics 71
Karl Fallend
CHAPTER FIVE
Freud the analyst and therapist 87
Ernst Falzeder
CHAPTER SIX
Notes and questions for Freud and Ms Guggenbühl
talking about the “G case study” 103
André Haynal
INDEX 113
ABOUT T HE EDITOR AND CONTRIBUTORS
Editor
Anna Koellreuter, PhD, is a psychoanalyst and clinical psychologist in
Zurich, and is a member of the Psychoanalytic Seminar in Zurich. Her
publications are on the analysis of women by women, on the female
analyst in the analytic process, and on the dynamics of drives in anal-
ysis. Her latest book is Das Tabu des Begehrens. Zur Verflüchtigung des
Sexuellen in Theorie und Praxis der feministischen Psychoanalyse [The Taboo
of Desire. On the Volatility of the Sexual in the Theory and Practice of
Feminist Psychoanalysis] (Gießen: Psychosozial Verlag, 2001).
Contributors
Karl Fallend, PhD, is a professor of social psychology at August
Aichhorn Institute, Graz, and an independent researcher based in
Vienna. He has written extensively on the history of psychoanalysis,
psychology and human rights, and National Socialism and its after-
math. Since 1984, he has been co-editor of Werkblatt. Zeitschrift für
Psychoanalyse und Gesellschaftskritik [Werkblatt. Journal of Psychoanaly-
sis and Social Criticism] (www.werkblatt.at).
vii
viii A B O U T T H E E D I TO R A N D C O N T R I B U TO R S
Ernst Falzeder, PhD, is a senior research fellow at University College

London, and works as an editor and translator for the Philemon Foun-
dation, which makes available the complete works of C. G. Jung. He is
a former research fellow at the universities of Geneva, Harvard, and
Cornell Medical School. He was chief editor of the Freud-Ferenczi
correspondence (Harvard), editor of the complete Freud-Abraham
letters (Karnac), translator of Jung’s seminar on children’s dreams
(Princeton), and editor, with John Beebe, as well as translator of Jung’s
correspondence with Hans Schmid-Guisan (Princeton). He has written
more than two hundred publications on the history, theory, and tech-
nique of psychoanalysis and analytical psychology, the most recent
being Psychoanalytic Filiations: Mapping the Psychoanalytic Movement
(Karnac, 2015).
André E. Haynal, MD, is a psychoanalyst, a former president of the

Swiss Psychoanalytic Society, and a recipient of the Sigourney Award
for his life’s work. He was the supervising editor of the Freud-Ferenczi
correspondence, and has written twelve books, the most recent being
Disappearing and Reviving: Sándor Ferenczi in the History of Psychoanalysis
(Karnac, 2002).
SERIES EDI TOR’S FOREWORD
Anna Koellreuter does not know that back in 2007 she cured me of a
very frightening anxiety attack!
In the middle of a transatlantic crossing, the airplane on which I trav-
elled encountered tremendous turbulence. The plane began to bump up
and down, quite frighteningly—so much so that the cabin crew had to
strap themselves into their seats. A number of passengers made increas-
ingly audible noises, some crying out, “Oh, God … Oh, God!” As we
jolted in our seats, I had to entertain the possibility that we might well
crash.
Sitting alone in the back row, I decided that I could either subject
myself to every nuance of the turbulence, or, I could reach into my
carry-on luggage and choose something interesting to read in the hope
of distracting myself. Happily, I had brought with me a copy of the
newly published issue of the journal Psychoanalysis and History; and,
intrigued to know that a psychoanalyst in Switzerland had just pub-
lished a paper about her grandmother’s analysis with Sigmund Freud,
I began to read Dr Koellreuter’s publication.
Within minutes, I found myself creatively transported to Vienna,
1921, and I proceeded to read with increasing interest Anna Koellreuter’s
account about how her grandmother, described in that article solely
ix
x S E R I E S E D I TO R ’ S F O R E W O R D
by the initial “G.”, had travelled from Switzerland to undertake

approximately four months of six-times weekly sessions—roughly
eighty in all—with the father of psychoanalysis. Before long, the jerky
movements of my British Airways flight no longer troubled me, and I
became enraptured by Dr Anna Koellreuter’s accomplished prose (ren-
dered beautifully into English by Dr Ernst Falzeder), and by the privi-
leged opportunity to hear Freud speak in such a vivid manner.
So, I owe Dr Koellreuter a huge debt of thanks for helping me to
navigate a rather terrifying experience!
Not long after the publication of her journal article, Koellreuter
produced a full-length book about her grandmother’s diary, which
appeared first in German (Koellreuter, 2009) and then in French (Anna
G., 2010), each of which I read with fascination, never suspecting that
only a few years’ hence, we would have the opportunity to publish an
English-language version of her wonderful contribution to psychoana-
lytical scholarship.
As historians will know only too well, many of Freud’s former
patients have written book-length memoirs about their experiences
in analysis, which include the charming and engaging autobiography
by the American psychoanalyst Dr Abram Kardiner (1977), My Analy-
sis with Freud: Reminiscences, as well as the more sceptical tribute by
the American psychiatrist Professor Joseph Wortis (1954), Fragments
of an Analysis with Freud, and many others to boot (e.g., H.D. [Hilda
Doolittle], 1956; Dorsey, 1976; Pohlen, 2006), not to mention the shorter
accounts provided by Professor Paul Roazen (1995) in his book How
Freud Worked: First-Hand Accounts of Patients. But in spite of the tremen-
dous value afforded by these publications, many composed decades
afterwards, few accounts have the immediacy of the diaries of Anna
Koellreuter’s grandmother, whose name can now be revealed in full as
Dr Anna Guggenbühl.
Reading through Dr Guggenbühl’s diary, one senses that, like many a
dedicated analysand, she attended each of her sessions and then, after-
wards, might have popped into a local Kaffeehaus in order to jot down
some of her thoughts, her free associations, her dreams and, of most
importance, Freud’s words, in as much detail as she could remember.
Thus, this extraordinary book grants us the rare opportunity to hear
Freud speaking to a patient directly, offering us one of the best glimpses
into how he actually talked, how he formulated interpretations, and
how he worked in the transference.
S E R I E S E D I TO R ’ S F O R E W O R D xi
Throughout the diary, we obtain a rich glimpse into the nature

of psychoanalytical conversations in the early 1920s and into the
range of techniques which Freud employed. Certainly, we know that
Dr Guggenbühl spoke extensively about her dreams, and shared many
intimate details with Freud; we also come to learn that both Freud and
Guggenbühl discussed sexuality and bodily functions with great frank-
ness, covering such topics as masturbation, genitalia, urine, faeces, and
semen. One cannot quite imagine any other setting in which a young
female physician could speak about these matters in such a direct fash-
ion with a much older man.
In terms of technical interventions, Freud certainly privileged the
interpretation, sharing both genetic interpretations about the meaning
of past events in the patient’s life, as well as transference interpreta-
tions, explaining her material in terms of the psychoanalytical relation-
ship. But he also asked the patient direct questions; he analysed her
dreams; he interpreted resistance; he forged links between sessions,
cross-referencing material; he formulated constructions and reconstruc-
tions; he made clarificatory comments and provided explanations; and
he offered didactic instruction in the symbolism of dreams, inter alia.
One might assume that Freud also utilised silence—the very bedrock of
clinical practice, both then and now—although in the diary, we cannot,
of course, hear Freud’s silences as palpably as his words. Thus, we form
a picture of Freud as an accomplished conversationalist who covered a
broad range of topics in a wide variety of styles, eliciting compelling
free associative material, dream material, sexual material, and early
memories, in a fluid fashion.
Above all, we have the opportunity to observe Freud making “clas-
sical” connections, interpreting lovers in adult life as reincarnations of
the patient’s father and brothers. Clearly, the interpretation of oedipal
material takes pride of place.
Modern readers of this nearly century-old diary may enjoy the expe-
rience of watching Freud making a host of astute interconnections, but
from the comforts of our chairs nearly one hundred years later, we can,
from time to time, assume the role of posthumous supervisor, and won-
der whether Freud missed out on the meaning of certain pieces of the
patient’s material. For instance, in extract 20, Dr Guggenbühl made a
reference to “an elderly gentleman”, of whom she wrote, “it was as if
he knew about everything”. Although referring, ostensibly, to a man
acquainted with her boyfriend, one wonders whether this remark might
xii S E R I E S E D I TO R ’ S F O R E W O R D
represent a piece of transference to Freud, the elderly, omniscient man,

who understands it all. Indeed, this diary entry precedes the patient’s
declaration of love for Freud’s genius not long thereafter. Perhaps
Freud did make such a transference interpretation, although the diary
does not provide evidence one way or the other.
Anna Guggenbühl’s text has also furnished us with other snippets
of fascinating information. For instance, we encounter a reference to
“Leporello”, the character from Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart’s opera
Don Giovanni, provided by the ostensibly non-musical Freud. Addition-
ally, we learn that Freud did not have an entirely soundproof office;
and in extract 35, dated 26th April, 1921, Guggenbühl reported that
while sitting in Freud’s waiting-room at the Berggasse, she could hear
a patient, then in session, talking about chorophyll! It would be hugely
tempting to identity this chorophyll-speaking patient as Arthur Tans-
ley, the English botanist; but it seems that he did not begin his analysis
with Freud until some months after Guggenbühl had completed her
own treatment (e.g., Cameron and Forrester, 1999, 2000).
Above all, we learn yet again how closely Freud paid attention to
his patient’s discourse, relishing the detail of Dr Guggenbühl’s commu-
nications. Thus, the precancerous Freud who emerges from this diary
might be described as a very alert, very awake, and very alive Sigmund
Freud. Indeed, sharing yet another family memory, the editor and
granddaughter Anna Koellreuter has written: “My mother remembers
a remark of my grandmother that it was Freud’s presence, his being
in the same room, above all, that had been effective; words were only
of secondary importance”. Perhaps Freud might be considered a rela-
tional psychoanalyst after all, who used his presence and his personal-
ity, as well as his extraordinary capacity for metaphor, symbolism, and
interpretation, to forge meaningful communication with his patients.
We sense that the analysis proved helpful to Dr Guggenbühl and
that as it neared its ending, she began to dread the termination of what
we would now regard as a relatively short duration of treatment. In
one of the last extracts, Dr Guggenbühl reported a dream, of which
she wrote: “Fr. has stolen something”. Might this be a reference to the
patient’s thought that Freud had taken away something very precious
from Guggenbühl, having previously arranged to end her treatment
entirely just prior to his summer holiday?
Not only does Anna Koellreuter’s edition of her grandmother’s
diary contain a carefully translated, edited, and annotated text along
S E R I E S E D I TO R ’ S F O R E W O R D xiii
with beautiful photographs of her family, as well as a reproduction of

one of Freud’s letters; but, also, we have the benefit of Koellreuter’s
own reminiscences and contextualisations. Koellreuter writes as both
a loving granddaughter and as an experienced psychoanalyst, offering
her own understanding of Freud’s clinical technique. I particularly val-
ued Koellreuter’s classification of Freud’s approach to the formulation
of interpretations: “First, they are suggestive and leading; second, they
are symbolistic; and third, they are reductive”. Modern practitioners
might approach the formulation of an interpretation with more delicacy
and diplomacy and, perhaps, with less certitude; but one suspects that
without Freud’s pioneering approach to the rendering of the interpre-
tation, our contemporary psychoanalytical discourse would be much
poorer indeed.
As a welcome bonus, Koellreuter has commissioned three excellent
chapters which complete the book, each written by intellectually robust
and historically rigorous Continental psychoanalytical scholars: Profes-
sor Karl Fallend, Dr Ernst Falzeder (who had translated Koellreuter’s
original paper into English), and Professeur André Haynal.
First of all, Karl Fallend offers us a detailed contextualisation of the
social and political climate at the time of Freud’s analysis of Guggen-
bühl. Through his deft chapter, we learn of Freud’s reliance on the fees
of foreign patients who paid in Swiss francs or American dollars, which
helped Freud to feed his family in the wake of the Weltkrieg. We also
learn how Guggenbühl arrived in a post-war Vienna full of possibility,
at a time when the feminist movement had begun to flourish, and when
psychoanalysis became increasingly professionalised, institutionalised,
and internationalised.
Ernst Falzeder has written a characteristically elegant chapter which
surveys Freud’s approach to clinical technique. Underscoring that
Freud never succeeded in writing a comprehensive textbook of clinical
rules, diaries such as Guggenbühl’s assume a great importance in help-
ing us to reconstruct his technical approach. Astutely, Falzeder under-
scores that this diary holds an important place as it constitutes one of
the only detailed sources of Freud’s working method prior to the onset
of his cancer in 1923, which resulted in audiological problems for the
founder of psychoanalysis. Reviewing Freud’s many technical devia-
tions (ranging from serving food to the “Rat Man”, to offering money to
Bruno Goetz, to walking round the Ringstraße with Dr Max Eitingon),
Falzeder reminds us that for Freud, “It almost seems as if with him,
xiv S E R I E S E D I TO R ’ S F O R E W O R D
these aberrations were not the exception, but the rule”. Yet in spite of
Freud’s propensity for stretching his own rules, the Guggenbühl diary
does, however, by contrast, provide us a glimpse of the more classi-
cal Freud who simply sat in his chair, “like an old owl in a tree” (H.D.
[Hilda Doolittle], 1945, p. 85), rendering interpretations of dreams.
The book concludes with a helpful essay by André Haynal, a veri-
table doyen of Freud history, who has written a detailed study of the
texture of Freud’s work with Guggenbühl, underscoring how he helped
his patient to feel understood and how he assisted Guggenbühl in
broadening the focus of her analysis from her initial concerns to more
characterologically-orientated issues.
It gives me great delight that English-speaking students of Freud and
psychoanalysis now have the opportunity to enjoy this important pri-
mary document, presented in such a scholarly fashion; and it brings
me much pleasure that we can include this volume in our “History of
Psychoanalysis Series”. Dr Anna Koellreuter could well have kept this
private family diary under wraps for decades to come, but thanks to her
generosity of spirit, those of us who still wish to learn from Sigmund
Freud can now do so even more fully.
Professor Brett Kahr.

Series Co-Editor.
London.
June, 2016.
References
Anna G. [Anna Guggenbühl] (2010). Mon Analyse avec le Professeur Freud.
Anna Koellreuter (Ed.). Jean-Claude Capèle (Transl.). Paris: Aubier/
Flammarion, Aubier.
Cameron, Laura, and Forrester, John (1999). “A Nice Type of the English
Scientist”: Tansley and Freud. History Workshop Journal, 48, 62–100.
Cameron, Laura, and Forrester, John (2000). Tansley’s Psychoanalytic
Network: An Episode Out of the Early History of Psychoanalysis in
England. Psychoanalysis and History, 2, 189–256.
Dorsey, John M. (1976). An American Psychiatrist in Vienna, 1935–1937, and
His Sigmund Freud. Detroit, Michigan: Center for Health Education.
H.D. [Hilda Doolittle] (1945). Writing on the Wall. [Part I]. Life and Letters
To-Day, 45, 67–98.
S E R I E S E D I TO R ’ S F O R E W O R D xv
Kardiner, Abram (1977). My Analysis with Freud: Reminiscences. New York:

W.W. Norton and Company.
Koellreuter, Anna (2007). Being Analysed by Freud in 1921: The Diary of a
Patient. Ernst Falzeder (Transl.). Psychoanalysis and History, 9, 137–151.
Koellreuter, Anna (Ed.). (2009). “Wie benimmt sich der Prof. Freud eigentlich?”:
Ein neu entdeckes Tagebuch von 1921 historisch und analytisch kommentiert.
Gießen: Psychosozial-Verlag.
Pohlen, Manfred (2006). Freuds Analyse: Die Sitzungsprotokolle Ernst Blums.
Reinbeck bei Hamburg: Rowohlt/Rowohlt Verlag.
Roazen, Paul (1995). How Freud Worked: First-Hand Accounts of Patients.
Northvale, New Jersey: Jason Aronson.
Wortis, Joseph (1954). Fragments of an Analysis with Freud. New York: Simon
and Schuster.
INT RODUCTION
The story of the diary

Anna Koellreuter
“What is this Professor Freud like, and how does he actually behave?”
Anna Guggenbühl’s father asks his daughter in a letter of 13 June 1921.
From April to July 1921, Anna was in analysis with Freud, a period dur-
ing which she did not write to her family at all. She did, however, keep
a diary about her sessions.
The analysand is my grandmother. More than twenty-six years
ago—seven years after she passed away—a letter from Freud was dis-
covered when clearing her house. In this letter, Freud names the condi-
tions to be fulfilled should an analysis take place: his fees, a minimum
duration of four months, and the analysand’s willingness to make a
decision as soon as possible. Shortly after this discovery, we also found
her diary. I was quite shaken by this find. My family and I have always
been aware that my grandmother had been in analysis with Freud, even
if she herself never talked about it in detail—not even to me. As a uni-
versity student, I had lived with her and my grandfather for a couple
of years while training in the same profession as she had, namely, psy-
choanalysis. In spite of her training, my grandmother had never prac-
tised. Even when she showed great interest in my analytical work, she
always resisted addressing her own analysis with Freud. What exactly
was taboo about it? Did she think that the analysis went well, or was
xvii
xviii INTRODUCTION
the problem that she thought it didn’t? Why didn’t she practise as an
analyst after working as a psychiatrist for several years, first at the
Burghölzli in Zurich, and later in Paris? Did she never plan to do so in
the first place? These and many other questions puzzled me.
Surprisingly, after having read the notebooks that contained the
diary, I was hardly pleased with the sensational discovery. On the con-
trary, I mostly felt perplexed and biased; impressions that would affect
me more strongly the more I read my grandmother’s notes. The inti-
macy of what she recorded, and the unique expressions she chose, had
something about them that scared me. At the same time, however, I was
aware of how precious a find I had at hand here—the reactions it pro-
voked in my immediate personal and professional surroundings only
reaffirmed this. When I started speaking about the diary, I was imme-
diately urged to make it accessible to the public, or to at least hand it
over to the care of the Sigmund Freud Archives. The pressure from the
outside grew to a degree that I decided to just leave the whole affair
be. In addition, my family, at this point, was not prepared to give their
consent to publication.
All these years, I could not stop thinking about the diary. I flipped
through it time and again. At some point I started transcribing it, and
finally reconsidered the possibility of publishing. My most important
question was: How can I protect my grandmother, but still give the
public access to her diary? In February 2007, I decided to give a talk
about it at the symposium Zur Geschichte der Psychoanalyse [Towards
the History of Psychoanalysis] in Tübingen, Germany. The response
was overwhelming, and publication became a topical issue once again.
I did not want to focus on my grandmother’s life, so a biography was
out of the question. Instead, I wanted the notes she took during her
analysis with Freud to take centre stage—that is, I was interested in
the insights into Freud’s methods and ways of working that the diary
could provide.
To me, the crucial question was: how can I, as a psychoanalyst, address
a grandmother who was both a psychiatrist and in analysis with Freud?
Many seemed to envy me for being granddaughter to one of Freud’s
patients. I was facing a dilemma. To the experts, the discovery of the
diary is a sensation. To me, as an involved family member, it is also a
problem—a problem that can be best summed up in the question I keep
returning to; namely, the question whether this analysis was a success
or not. I cannot answer this question, neither as a granddaughter, nor as
INTRODUCTION xix
a psychoanalyst. I cannot and do not want to treat my grandmother as

a “case”—for this, I am too biased.
Finally, I had an idea of how to unburden myself: ask other people!
In other words, show the diary to a number of experts in the fields of
psychoanalytical historical studies and theory building, and invite them
to share their thoughts on my grandmother’s notes on her interaction
with Freud. Since they do not know my grandmother, I reckoned, they
would be able to engage with the records freely and without prejudice.
With this idea, I approached twenty authors. All of them were pro-
vided with the same material to work with: I sent them the paper I
had given in Tübingen (2007), a complete transcript of the diary, and
an article about my Tübingen talk that had been published in Die Zeit
(Falzeder, 2007). I did not instruct them with questions or topics of my
own. The authors were to go about their texts without restrictions or
predetermination. Most of them were fascinated not only by access to
the hitherto unknown diary the project promised, but also by the pos-
sibility of exploring it without topical restrictions. Many immediately
agreed to contribute. The call resulted in an edited volume comprising
sixteen very diverse articles that scrutinised the source text from a wide
range of different perspectives.
The book was published in 2009 for the first time, with a second edi-
tion following in 2010. The year after the diary’s first publication was
eventful. Many presentations and book talks took place. The book was
translated and published in French (Koellreuter, 2010). In the autumn
of 2009, Peter Brunner of Sogar Theater Zurich produced a play read-
ing of the diary notes, which sold out for eight evenings. The most
recent play reading took place at the Leo Baeck Institute in New York
on 21 May 2014.1 Thanks to the brilliant performers Graziella Rossi and
Helmut Vogel, I could finally hear the voice of the diary, namely that
of my grandmother, for the first time after years of reading. This did
not only touch me on a personal level in yet another new way, but also
opened up new dimensions of the diary for me. Only now I am able to
understand the three stages that followed my intense involvement with
the diary of the analysis—and thus with my grandmother herself.
In the first stage, I was occupied with my basic initial problem: the
fact that I could not, and did not want to, analyse the protocols myself.
This resulted in the idea of letting others do the evaluating, and thus
kick off a discussion about Freud’s methods and ways of working. In a
way, this also meant putting my grandmother in the hands of strangers.
xx INTRODUCTION
While the contributions generated by this approach were as exciting

and multifaceted as I had wished for them to be, they were partly also
upsetting to me. After all, my grandmother was not always portrayed
in the way I see her, or want her to be seen. The authors’ contributions
brought other aspects about my grandmother and her analysis to light.
What was at stake in the book basically also threatened to question the
relationship I had with my grandmother. But this was the price I had to
pay for the publication.
The next stage, the book launch, allowed me to work through these
grievances. As time went by, I was able to situate myself at a certain dis-
tance from the book, and thus appropriate the publication for myself.
Thinking about the book to (and for) myself, I noticed that my grand-
mother’s notes contained all the general topics of an analysis: Oedipus
complex, sibling rivalry, symbolism, and so on. Her declarations of love
to Freud become conscious quickly enough, as transference-love is part
and parcel of every analysis. Freud can offer only a few new insights,
because she had already read many of his texts. One could put it this
way: she transports all the general material in her diary. But she also
decided to take down and work through that which made her analysis
particular, that is, everything that helped her become capable of loving
and making the right decision. The reader remains excluded from these
processes. This also applies to me, her granddaughter.
The third and (for now) last stage of appropriation was enabled by
the theatrical reading of the diary, by actors, on stage. The discord I felt
about the publication subsided when I could hear her voice, and that
of Freud. The theatrical reading transmitted the formidable emotional
oscillations between the two, generated by analysand and analyst
engaging with each other in an erotic-narcissist fashion. The interpre-
tation of her dreams, in the diary as well as on stage, reminded me
that she gave me her own copy of Freud’s The Interpretation of Dreams
(1900a) as a gift when I was a teenager. And I finally realised how great
her interest in dreams and their interpretation had been all through her
life.
For this publication, four of the sixteen texts in the German vol-
ume have been selected to accompany the diary. My own contribution
primarily focuses on Freud’s methods, which appear—at least in my
grandmother’s memories—suggestive in the sense that Freud’s convic-
tion of the Oedipus complex’s universal effectuality at times made him
INTRODUCTION xxi
lead his analysand’s associations in his favoured direction, instead of

following them.
After my diary story, there is a fully translated version of the diary
itself, edited by Ernst Falzeder. Following that is a chapter that offers a
small collection of visual material relating to Anna Guggenbühl’s life
and diary. Three further contributions complete the volume.
Karl Fallend’s chapter, “’Prof. Freud calls for tolerance!’ Dashes
that moved the couch—and politics”, describes the development
of psychoanalysis in the light of the political upheavals in post-war
Vienna. Based on a number of early diary entries (“the sounding of the
flute”) that mention Arthur Schnitzler’s novella The Shepherd’s Pipe,
Karl Fallend illustrates the political climate of this particular period,
which stretched well into Anna Guggenbühl’s analysis. Schnitzler’s
scandalous play La Ronde was a scorching critique of bourgeois sexual
morality, a critique that Freud shared with the playwright: “Marital
unfaithfulness would … be a much more probable cure for the neurosis
resulting from marriage” (Freud, 1908d, p. 23).
Ernst Falzeder’s text discusses Freud as analyst and therapist.
Drawing on Freud’s own texts, memoirs of and interviews with former
analysands, reports in secondary literature, and the information pro-
vided by Freud’s patient calendars, Falzeder traces Freud’s methods,
and describes him as a creative, highly flexible analyst, whose work at
times also covered psychotherapeutic terrain in a narrower sense.
André Haynal’s contribution reads Anna Guggenbühl’s analysis as
displaying methods that would be regarded as classic in the decades
that followed. He argues that all basic ideas and the limitations of these
methods become apparent in the notes. In effect, André Haynal’s article
provides a supervision of Freud’s methods from today’s point of view.
Freud takes a position of power, that of the savant, and appears doctri-
nal. The theoretical problems that occupied him at the time clearly push
through. In other words: the analysis shows the dynamics of a counter-
transference that could not be openly addressed, and thus also points
towards the mysterious connections between an analyst’s autoanalysis
and their analysis of the patient. Haynal argues that these are crucial
dimensions of present-day psychoanalytical practice.
I would like to thank the following people. My family’s consent
was a prerequisite for the publication of the diary. I am particularly
indebted to my mother, Anne Roth-Huggler, and her brothers and
xxii INTRODUCTION
sister, who entrusted me with the care of the original diary notebooks.
I am infinitely grateful to Graziella Rossi, Helmut Vogel, and Peter
Brunner of Sogar Theater Zurich, who, as performers and dramatic
adviser, brought the diary to life. Finally, I would like to thank Kristina
Pia Hofer in Vienna, who translated the texts and the diary from German
to English in the shortest time imaginable.
Note
1. How is this Professor Freud, and how does he actually behave? Diary
of an analysis with Dr Sigmund Freud. Performed by Graziella Rossi
and Tom Regan (stand-in for Helmut Vogel). Music: Harry White,
saxophone.
References
Falzeder, E. (2007). “Sie streifen so nah am Geheimnis.” Eine kleine wis-
senschaftliche Sensation: Das bislang unbekannte Tagebuch einer Freud-
Patientin, die ihre Sitzungen protokollierte. Die Zeit, 2 August, p. 32.
Freud, S. (1900a). The Interpretation of Dreams. S. E., 4–5. London: Hogarth.
Freud, S. (1908d). “Civilized” Sexual Morality and Modern Nervous Illness.
S. E., 9: 179. London: Hogarth.
Koellreuter, A. (2007). Als Patientin bei Freud 1921. Aus dem Tagebuch einer
Analysandin. Werkblatt. Zeitschrift für Psychoanalyse und Gesellschaftskri-
tik, 58(1): 3–23.
Koellreuter, A. (Ed.) (2010). Mon analyse avec le Professeur Freud—Anna G.
Paris: Aubier/Flammarion.
Schnitzler, A. (1911). Die Hirtenflöte. Stuttgart: Deutscher Bücherbund, 1975.
CHAPT ER O NE
Diary of an analysis, April 1921*
First book
(no date, i.e., at the beginning)
Page (1)
When I was four years old, in Strasbourg, there was my little cousin,
a fat baby. I pinched her, and when I was alone I always bullied her until
she cried. Once I pulled out all the saplings on the balcony, I thought
they were weeds. Incidentally, I discovered masturbation there by
pressing myself against a cornice.
Fr [Freud]: This is a very remarkable memory. Did you also badger your little
brother?
I turned him on his back, for instance, so that he could no longer get up.
Fr: You started to masturbate when you felt lonely. You were no longer
loved1
* Translation: Ernst Falzeder and Kristina Pia Hofer.

1
2 W H AT I S T H I S P R O F E S S O R F R E U D L I K E ?
(2)
as much as when you were as a single child. So you took revenge on the little
child and on the symbol, the sapling.
When my brother Walter was born, I asked when I saw him: Why
doesn’t he cry?
Fr: [“]So you would have liked to see him in a crying state, just like your
cousin?”
--------------------2
One can clearly see three levels in your life:
The uppermost one is your present conflict with R etc.
The one in the middle concerns your relation to your brother.
You are still quite unconscious of the deepest level, which is connected with
your parents,
(3)
and which is the most important one. It is from this that the relation to the
brother is derived.
--------------------3
--------------------
Later. I tell Freud: When I went to grammar school, I thought I would
like to love a young man who was immensely sad, and I would make
life possible for him, and he then would be happy.
Fr: Like with your brother.
Then I thought later I would like to have seven children; I did not think
of the father.
Fr: Seven men, actually. Seven?
Adam had seven sons.4 Papedöne5 hangs
(4)
his seven sons. Der Hungerueli Isegrind frisst sini 7 chline Chind.6 I believe
male cats devour their offspring.
Fr: You are coming so near the secret of the deepest level that I can break it
to you:
D I A RY O F A N A N A LY S I S , A P R I L 1 9 2 1 3
You loved your father, and never forgave him his betrayal with the mother.
You wanted to be the mother of the child. So you wished the mother, who took
the lover away from you for herself, dead. Bit by bit you will produce evidence
for this, and the riddle of why you cannot get away from your brother will be
solved.
--------------------
(5)
Three layers are easily recognisable in your life, the present one, which concerns
the brothers; and the deepest one, which is connected with the parents. What
is pathological is the long-lasting indecision whether or not you should marry
Richard. The fact that no decision is reached proves that something else must lie
behind it, something that is, as you recognise yourself, connected with the broth-
ers and the parents.
“In Paris, I liked Walter so much; suddenly he, and no longer Adolf,
seemed to be my ideal.[”]
“You glide from one to the other, just as you do with the lovers. The lovers are
brother substitutes, that’s why they are of the same age, actually younger in a
social sense.[”]
(6)
I’d like to go to Russia; like those aristocratic sons and daughters who
left their families during the last revolution, I’d like to go away and
leave the milieu into which I do not belong. I am thinking of that piece
by Schnitzler, “Der Flötenton (‘The Sounding of the Flute’).[”]7-
“That is exactly your conflict.[”]8
(7) 15 April, 21
I had two dreams: A schizophrenic man was there and my mother and
my grand-mother, and it was unpleasant.
Then there was another dream: A stocking made of brocade, blue and
embroidered with gold, but embroidered in a careless way, it was cheap
brocade, the threads were sticking out so much.9
What comes to your mind concerning the schizophrenic?
I once believed Richard to be schizophrenic, when we took a walk
on a meadow and when he suddenly, in the middle of an important
conversation, looked at the horses, I thought: Now he is obstructed.10

Hans Peter,11 however, was is in fact schizophrenic.
(8)
Immer,12 too. I also believed that the sculptor’s family was schizoid,
because one brother is a teacher and does not want to marry, and
one sister, over 30, is also unmarried. When Adolf had the neurosis,
I thought I wanted to learn psychoanalysis,13 if only he were able to
last for a few more years; because I love him so much, my accomplish-
ments will be so much greater than those of any other human being.
On Then with Richard I thought again, I want to learn everything,
so that I can figure everything out. Now, I am learning it for my own
sake.
“Stocking?”
I believe a condom is called Parisian stocking. It was embroidered in a
rough way, in cheap brocade,
(9)
just like a small purse I wanted to give my cousin for Christmas. In
artificial light it looked quite nice, but in daylight it was cheap. I later
exchanged it for a nicer purse.
“So the masculine symbol is substituted for a female one—a purse.[”]
I used to be jealous of14 this cousin. She planned to also go to Geneva,
and I imagined the possibility of Richard falling in love with her.
I thought: She must die, and I thought it possible to kill her by my wish-
ing her dead.
“Blue and gold?”
Blue and gold was the little purse my brother gave to Helen. He also
gave her a stocking full of presents. Every morning he gave
(10)
her something else. One time it was a jewel case, another time an apple
made of wax. Jewel cases are my biggest pleasure, I have a collection of
them. Actually the one that Dölf gave Helen was not so nice; I found a
lovely one in Paris, which I wanted to give to Helen. But I did not have
the heart to do it.
“Did you think it might bring her bad luck?”

Yes. Once I believed my mother was a witch, when I was about 18 years
old and I screamed in the night, she came to my bed in a nightgown. Not
an ordinary witch. Once when I was a child I dreamed15 that my great-
grandmother was made of wax. She was of wax and turned around
(11)
That is the most ghastly thing. Once I visited a trade show with my
other grand-mother and I was looking through a glass. I saw a man
standing on the footboard of a coach. He was murdering somebody.
Was he called Dreifuss? It was ghastly. So sculptural, like made
of wax.
Freud: last time we saw that you are bored, that you would like to love some-
body. Now there are two ways in analysis: Some people have to do everything,
the others, where enough mental material is present, deal with everything
within their psyche. If possible, put a stop to the adventures. Bear it and suffer
want, so that everything will come out all the more clearly
(12)
in the analytic hour.
18 April, 21
1st dream: I was lying in bed in the evening, the light was on. Then
I saw, on the left side of my head, disgusting, brownish stains on the
sheet. Repellent little worms moved in the liquid (they [the stains] still
wet). I was disgusted and called my dad, and he was there and just
laughed a bit, he was not frightened. It was like when I was a child and
was scared and he came.
2nd dream: Helen was wearing an embroidered dress and asked me:
Do you like it?
(13)
I said: Yes, it is wonderful!, but the dress was not so beautiful, I just
pretended. Helen however had actually meant to ask if I liked a
particular carpet, which was also embroidered. The carpet was indeed
more beautiful than the dress and would have better fitted my answer,
but the embroidery was still rather coarse, looking slightly Bulgarian,
not new.
Freud: “It is more appropriate to look at the 2nd, more recent dream first. Again,
it contains a speech. Usually, the words are taken from a speech in reality.”16
At Christmas, a year ago, my cousin had embroidered a handkerchief
for my mother, and I said: It is delightful, although I did not like it. My
brother later said: You have
(14)
come quite far in pretending. When Helen was in Paris, I also pre-
tended to like her coat, when she asked me what I thought of it. I did
not like it as much as I said when I first looked at it.
Fr: Thus the embroidered handkerchief and the coat have condensed into the
embroidered dress.
To my dismay, I was quite satisfied in Paris that Helen was not as

elegant as I managed to be. Back home, when I made a show of my
dresses, Dölf and Richard became sad, and so did I, because my mis-
chievous purpose had achieved its end: to stir Dölf’s admiration and to
intimidate Richard.
(15)
Carpet: The Smyrna17 carpet in the oriel has brownish stains from the
coffee that Dölf (her brother) and his friends drank there.
Fr: “So they are a bridge to the first dream, to the brownish stains.”
When I went to a café with the sculptor in my new dress, a young artist
spilled coffee on my dress. I smiled and said: No problem.
Once the sculptor embraced me. Afterwards there were stains on my
dress, but it was a different dress. He was terribly sorry, but I said: no
problem, really.
Fr: “So in the dream you call your father for help against the aggressions of the
young men
(16)
You take refuge in your father. Your unconscious thus confirms my state-
ment that your father was your first lover. Have you read the study on a hys-
teric: Dora?18 (Yes, but I don’t remember anything) Your dream is completely
modeled on Dora’s one. So you take the place of Dora, who, as we know,
is in love with her father. At first there comes the intellectual willingness,
then one accepts evidence from the unconscious, only then one admits it
emotionally, and finally, as a conclusion, direct memories appear. Your
love of the brother, conscious as it is, is not the deepest layer, and thus the
knowledge
(17)
of its existence is useless, you cannot free yourself from it, because it has
deeper roots.
19 April, 21
When I think “carpet,” I think of a carpet of flowers. I had a dream that
when I was in Teufen,19 I fall into an abyss, and when I hit the ground I
was lying on a wealth of forget-me-nots (+ dream of the old woman). In
Teufen, I was terribly homesick.
When I was not yet 4 years old, my mother often took me along to
see my grand-parents in Aussersihl.20 We walked in an alley lined
with chestnut trees (Gessnerallee21) and she pushed the carriage with
little Adolfli. I heard the trains whistle and I was homesick, I was
alone.
(18)
Freud: Was your father traveling often? So you were homesick for him.
In the recreation home in Enge,22 too, I was so homesick that he came
on Sundays; I was crying the whole day because he was leaving again.
Once, when I was a child of about 10 years, I imagined how it might be
to sleep with him, but just as a game, without desire.—I am surprised,
however, that23
The great-grandmother turning to wax all of a sudden. This song in
Faust always seemed so familiar, morbid: “There sits my mother upon
a stone, and her head is wagging ever.”24 It is similar.
Besides: I have murdered my mother, and my child
(19)
I drowned.
Fr: The “turning to wax,” i.e., the death of the great-grandmother, is a substi-
tute for the death of the mother that is wished for.
When I sprained my knee, I thought: It is like with my brother, who

sprained his foot after his Matura25 when he actually wanted to amuse
himself; but it is definitely a punishment because I wished upon
Richard’s sister to have a stiff knee. She was in opposition to my love,
i.e., engagement.
Fr: The unconscious confirms after the fact that she was right and said: since I
no longer love Richard, she had been jinxed in vain.
Me: She behaved the same way toward
(20)
Richard: When he was expelled from the fraternity she did not want
to associate with him anymore. He wanted to take his own life and
sat on a rock on the riverside of the Aare.26 Then an elderly gentle-
man came along who addressed him, it was as if he knew about
everything.
Fr: So your fiancé, too, sits on a rock to die. Thus you are transferring the death
wishes onto this area.
I keep thinking [“]he must die[”] and [“]I must die[”] in turns.
(21)
21. IV. 21
Dream:
Friends of Adolf and Walti [her brothers] were there, but they were all
a bit younger. They swam out into the lake, and the sun was shining.
Oesch [one of the friends] was there and he was very little, I help him
get over the wall, because he couldn’t do it on his own, and in the gar-
den on the other side he suddenly threw himself on me and embraced
me. I was a bit surprised that such a little boy dared do that and I didn’t
really like it because there were people who were watching. Then I had
a sweet little jewel case. I said: The lid looks like a chessboard, but when
I opened it it was not like a chessboard at all. There were the loveliest
things in it,
(22)
for example, a little wedding party, little people cut out of paper so they
could stand up. I wi wanted to give some to Margrit, but I regretted it.
Fr: The many friends

They were all little, almost like children, Oesch in part.[icular] was very
little. I helped him get over the wall, that is, I seduced him to love.
27
Fr: Let us insert the symbols that we know thanks to our insights
Chessboard: My father recently said he had played chess with my
mother before they became engaged, and then he had asked her whether
she wanted to be his queen.
Fr: [“]You can also insert the symbols yourself, so that you can make a con-
nection when
(23)
you get stuck with the associations. Rampart Wall—this is the wall that has to
be surmounted to embrace you.” It is the hymen. The little jewel case is the28
genital.
Fr: The dream beautifully shows how the tendencies from the past. The jewel
case is like a chessboard, i.e. you are taking the place of the mother, but after-
wards: it is no chessboard after all, meaning, you turn away from the father.
The friends, the “little ones,” swimming around there, are symbols for the
male member. You help him surmount the wall, that means, you want a real
defloration that eventually leads to marriage (the little wedding party in
the box)
(24)
You begrudge your cousin Margrit the marriage. The sun always stands for
the father.29
The sun was shining the same way in 2 other dreams: I. I was lying in
bed in the morning and the sun was shining through the patio door,
beautifully. Then the friends of Adolf came in, Walti, too, he put a book
on the cover. I told them to leave the room again because of mother. II.
Dream from grammar school: I sat at the kitchen table, sun was shining
through the window beautifully, I had a young lilac twig in my hand,
with young green leaves. They were not yet
(25)
in bloom. The table is the mother. I am thinking of mother making
small cakes for Carnival on the white table that is covered in flour. “At
Carnival my mother bakes/delicious little cakes./But then my dad

comes running,/and steals the cakes with cunning.[”]30
Fr: You are sitting on a table: like a little cake, these little cakes are the children
which are made by the mother.
Me: The father eats the cakes just like the Hungerueli Isegrind devours
his 7 children.
Twig: One time, a dog ran after me. I had to throw him autumn twigs
from a bunch I carried so that he would not bite me. It was like the story
of the wolves
(26)
in Russia, which are running after the sleigh, and blankets are thrown
at them, etc.
One time when I was about 9 years old I walked home from school and
a boy was beating our31 fox terrier with a little rod. I slapped him in the
face. Afterwards he and his mother came to our home and accused me.
Only my grandmother was present. She wanted to drag me out onto the
little patio, so that I should apologise to the boy in front of all the people
who had gathered in front of the garden. I did not do it but she dragged
me out together with the maid.
(27)
22. IV. 21
The little rod is a divining rod (the lilac twig from the last dream). A lit-
tle rod as the water diviners32 use it.
Fr: Do you perhaps remember that during masturbation you imagined children
being beaten?33
I imagined myself being beaten by the imaginary man. Once, but only
once, when Papa threatened to beat Adolf as soon as we were home,
I had a feeling of revulsion combined with some interest, but it was
gone when the threat was put into action. It was, after all, only the
threat.
When resistances arise in the analysis you behave in a similar way

because I am representing the father; the idea that the cure is of no
avail, for
(28)
Fr: This is the wish of being beaten yourself, because this means for the girl
(child) to be loved in a sexual way. Out of the desire for love + the guilty
conscience. Later on it takes the form of wishing to be merely scolded. When
resistances arise in the analysis, you behave in a similar way because I am
representing the father. p.ex.34 the idea that the cure is of no avail is already
the beginning of that. Your anxiety that you might make an even more stu-
pid choice in your marriage afterwards, because you wouldn’t be able to
endure it, is baseless, because the purpose of the cure is precisely to enable
you to control that instinct and thus to be able to make a free choice of whom
to marry,
(29)
and not out of fear of the instinct. This objection is reminiscent of the story of
the goose keeper and the horse keeper, who plan what they would do if they hit
the jackpot.35 The horse keeper describes the palace he would live in, the serv-
ants, etc. The goose keeper said he would thereupon only ever herd his geese
from horseback.
The idea that you h would be too old to start a new life is all the more unjusti-
fied in that you prolonged your puberty to an extraordinary degree by your
studies, and that you have had very little experience.
--------------------
At Burghölzli36 there was a girl
(30)
who was very intelligent and had a fine grasp of psycholog.[ical] under-
standing, she was called Anna37
She wanted to herself learn stenography, but she did not get past the
very first page, she could not focus at all.
I, too cannot focus any more.
Fr: Aha a Swiss national diagnosis!

38
(31) (32) (33)
(34)
25 April.
When Goethe was pretty39 old he wanted to marry a girl.40 In the

past I thought that she, of course, did not like the idea, but now I see
quite well that one might want to marry someone older. So t.[his]
m.[eans] I might per.[haps] want to marry you, I really like you very
much.
Fr: Now this is the transference of the old love and infatuation you had for the
father, onto me. All the painf.[ul] disappointment, jealousy etc. will come to
light later, too.
(35)
26 April, 21
In the waiting room I heard the pat.[ient] who comes before me say the
word “chlorophyll.” I thought I could never come up with such an asso-
ciation. I am so terribly ignorant. I lack all humanistic education, and I
haven’t absorbed the scientific education either.
Fr: So you want to belittle yourself intellectually. Other women usually
do it in physical matters. They might for instance say they’ve got haemor-
rhoids,41 etc.
Pause, nothing comes to mind.
Fr: so this is a spec.[ial] resistance that has to do with transference.
I cannot tell you how much I like you; I think I’ve never loved anybody
this way before.
(36)
Fr: This love for your father was so enormous that everything that
came later paled in comparison. People have no idea of the intensity of the
love of children, it only exists in potential form, after all, and is not put
into action.
When I was a child I always thought: Let me never experience unhappy
love, for my love is greater than that of other people.
Fr: You are able to think all that only because you had already experienced
disappointment at one time, which you did not remember consciously. When
you belittle yourself you do so to spoil your love for me, just like e.g. the lady
with the haemorrhoids
“But why does a neurosis then develop in me, is it not so that all human
beings experience such disappointment.[”]
(37)
Fr: First of all, the force of passion varies in different persons. There is a degree
of passion that can no longer be dealt with by the child, secondly, the other
party’s behaviour can be a cause.
26 April, 21
Dream: In three parts.
1. I am sitting on the water closet and many people are present. I can-
not pass t.[he] urine and am finally getting up again because I don’t
quite like having so many people watching me.
2. I am sitting on the water closet and a man, maybe a Spaniard, stands
in the door, pushing to get in. I catch his finger by slamming the door
shut.
(38)
3. Uncle Arthur says about Richard: He is really a good person and not
very intelligent. (So that the 2 parts do not quite match. It should
rather say: “but”)42
Ad. 2:
The Spaniard puts his finger in the crack of the door and I catch it:
Richard once told me about 2 lovers who froze to death in a cold winter
night because the man could not withdraw his penis.
Water closet: There was a case in my final exam: a girl aborted a child,
which then fell into the toilet43 as a premature baby, about 7 months
old.
Fr: Premature birth = toilet.44 The toilet is thus the visual symbol of the
abortion.
Margrit’s fiancé had something to do with an abortion, in which he
(39)
played a questionable part. Richard, too, in another abortion, in
which he proved how unreliable he was. Spaniard—or Hungarian.
Yesterday I went to a café with a Hungarian, who left the boarding

house today.
Fr:
Concerning the 1st dream: As a boy Dölf was afraid of the water
gushing in the toilet, but I wasn’t. He believed a water nymph was
in there.
Fr: The sound of the water reminded him of the sound his mother caused when
urinating, which he witnessed as a little child. Water nymph = mother symbol/
naked woman in the water. For obvious reasons you did not need to be afraid.
The first dream is simply an
(40)
illustration of you yourself as a woman. You sit down for passing your
water. The feeling of being embarrassed is in the background. That you
think of the brother’s fear of the sound of water in this instance points at
it. The second part is like a description out of a novel. In the dream, the
Hungarian has become the drama’s romantic protagonist. You want to hold
on to him.
The 3rd part clearly culls from the uppermost level.
Assoc.[iation] from feeling embarrassed f.[or] water closet: Papa was
always embarrassed when we burst into the bedroom and he was
changing, for instance. On the other hand he would not be embarrassed
of coming into my bedroom while I was getting changed for the night.
In my puberty I was much irritated by that. I thought that he might
have
(41)
sexu erot.[ic] feelings towards45 me
27.
Dream:
Some little friend of Walter was a little fond of me, probably embraced
me.
Then I was with Papa on a straight country road. I wondered whether
I should hang my coat in a narrow cabinet or not. Eventually I hung
my coat, an umbrella and another small object in the cabinet, and went
for a walk with Papa on the straight country road, in the sun, without
any clothes on. Then people were coming and I was ashamed of my
nakedness
(42)
and also because there I had something about me that was not quite
right; I think I had ugly high shoulders, something vulgar.
I was in a hotel at nightfall. There was something about a bill I had to
pay, and my cousin Margrit was there, too.
The little one represents the penis, i.e. I have intercourse with my father.
Is
The cabinet stood in the anatomy department [of the university], back
then, I always used to meet Richard at that cabinet. I really did put
my coat, my umbrella and my notebook inside. One time he thought
I had lost his notebook, he made a scene, it turned out it was not true,
he had
(43)
mislaid it himself. He conducted himself quite badly this time.
Fr: The father and Richard thus melt into one person in the dream. You are
dissatisfied with Richard.
I have a high shoulder bl[ades]: My friend Hedwig in Paris was not
such a pretty46 sight. I saw her when she was ill and I thought I could
not possibly love her. Also, that such an unattractive body could not be
a coincidence. I myself have beautiful round shoulders. In the dream,
therefore, there is something vile about me.
Country road—In the country road dream I had as a child it was the
same straight road. To the left and to the right there was a swamp and
many hands wanted to pull me into it—I thought this was about my
masturbation
(44)
The hotel is a brothel. During masturbation I imagined being in a house
with other girls like me. An unknown man beat me and had intercourse
with me.
Fr: And who might this unknown man be?

The father
When we moved into the house where we live now, said [sic]: how
pleasant, it is just like a hotel. Adolf had had the same idea about the
other house: the corridor looked like out of a brothel to us, even though
we had never seen one before.
His lover, who was very erotic, would later become a prostitute.
I thought that if I was just like her, i.e. if I had her success and at the
same time had my own
(45)
efficiency, I would have everything. Cousin Margrit is merely beautiful;
but I have a better character, more energy, or so I thought.
Fr: The coat and the umbrella are symbols—I know.—Fr: So this means
that you take off your masculinity, and are proud of being a woman, but
later are ashamed again of being a woman. You have a strong masculinity
complex.
Maybe you regretted being a girl when your brother was born, after all,
you said your father loved him very much, that he actually liked him
best.
(46)
30 April, 21
A man, probably of ill character, a Don Juan, that’s what he is. Concern-
ing cousin Margrit or Anni Scheidegger I say: Basically every human
heart is a leaf of lilac.47 With this I mean to say that there is something
good in every human being.
Adolf gave Helen a ring of jade, with a stone in the shape of a leaf or a
heart.
Fr: You are the Don Juan.
Dream: I am in a mine. A young [female] doctor tells me about her
sister who is also a young doctor, that she is married and has 7 intel-
ligent boys and a paralyzed girl. I am not surprised about this. “With
her intelligence you should have expected it.” I say. On the way
home Papa or Mama say: You should not tell everybody that you and
Richard are so poor so that you cannot eat nuts anymore. I say: But in
psychoanalysis I am also telling everything, and in any case I’ve given

up those prejudices by now.
A thug is sought by warrant by the police, and two officers are looking
for him. Sometimes he dresses up
(48)
as a woman, sometimes as a man. Finally he is caught, and the descrip-
tion on the warrant fits. It also says there that he is cross-eyed. He really
is cross-eyed. The officer asks him: Do you squint to the left or to the
right? The thug always squints to the opposite side, so that the stupid
officer cannot arrest him.
Mama, thinking that I was in love with this Merian48 was actually a
quite accomplished idea of mine!
Analysis:
The mine is the underground of the soul, the unconscious. The [female]
doctor and her sister are both me. I wanted to have 7 boys and I thought
I should also have a girl. Lately I decided to stop fantasising about the
future children, so that I would not be disappointed. Probably I’ll get
what I would want the least: A daughter who sits quietly on a chair and
does the mending and shows no interest in the world. Who is, in fact,
paralyzed.
The thug is the resistance. He dresses up as he likes, as a man or as
a woman, corresponding with the so-called masculinity complex.
Squints to the right or to the left: Riklin49 said I should detach myself
from my mother, and you say from my father. You and Riklin are the
stupid officers. When you of the detach So the thug evades the situa-
tion by squinting to the opposite side, at this moment in squinting to
the mother, because you always want to uncover the romantic relations
to the father.
(50)50
This Merian, I did not like the merest bit. Especially when he sent me a
letter in which he wrote about nothing but the weather, and in a very,
very unintelligent way at that.
The sculptor too wrote a stupid letter, which sobered me.
Fr: So the men do not come off well in this dream. Perhaps it announces that you
now want to resuscitate the homosexual component.
A different dream: I am meeting Gertrud Birnstiel51, I am in foreign

town, and I tell her that the doctor in the Versorgungshaus52 had sug-
gested to have my meniscus removed after all. The operation will take
place tomorrow. I am
(51)
very scared that my knee will go septic and remain stiff. For God’s sake,
I wouldn’t be able to dance anymore. T. Birnstiel says that this is an ill-
advised agreement that should be called off, and that I would surely
have to stay in the hospital for 2 months. “I cannot stand this,” but I
know that it is already too late, everything has been arranged.
Analysis:
I am concerned that after my analysis men will not fall in love with me
any longer, dancing and loving is the same. Even now I cannot do with-
out someone who likes me. I figured out that the analysis will only go
on for about 2 more months (mid-July) It appears as if
(52)
coming here was a delusional idea of mine. It is with difficulty that I
remember that I had no choice.
4 May
Dream:
I had a prominent red blotch in the face. A [female] friend asked me: Is
the blotch from your lover’s kisses? I replied: No, from bugs. I squeezed
it and slowly something grey came out from pressing it. I thought, if
only this would not deform me forever.—
Analysis: I really have red blotches and bumps53 from the bug bites, and
yesterday I thought: I am like the convicts in the “resurrection”54 fodder
for the lice
Second book
(1)
May 4 (Continued from first book)
After all, I, too, am lonely and imprisoned. Instead of being lovingly
devoured by the lover, the bugs are devouring me.
There was a girl at Burghölzli before I left. The girl that Bleuler55
diagnosed as: stubborn harlot. She had a one-sided infection of the knee
joint caused by gonorrhea, and Bl.[euler] said: If the gonococci would
only devour such a woman!
In the dre am I wish to be punished for my sins: Should56 to the vermin
devour me!
Fr57: In addition to that, the dream also has a deeper meaning. When you
squeeze the red swelling—does this remind you of something
Mitesser.58—Vermin is the symbol for children.

Freud: Mitesser is also a good expression for it, and is quite frequently found.
At first one feeds it from what we eat ourselves, and finally the children devour
us, that is, everything we own. The fear of
(2)
being disfigured by children is also justified when bearing numerous
children.
This morning I pricked my finger, there was a drop of blood, and I
thought this meant that I wanted to have a child. Snow White’s mother
pricked her finger when sewing, and wished for a child.59
Fr: Since the libido is dammed up because it cannot reach the man, all
these wishes are surfacing more urgently here. This is also the purpose of
abstinence.
5 May
In the dream I love a man I think he strongly resembles the sculptor and
I ask him where he is from. He says: from Brienz60 and I think: obviously
I have a particular fondness for people from Brienz. I know, however,
that in principle I am loving Richard [the fiancé, AK] and somehow this
isn’t right.
Analysis: I have a particular fondness for people
(3)
from certain areas: from Luxembourg, for example. I knew an intern at
the Burghölzli, but When I was 1961 years old, I got to know a Norwegian
at a skiing course, whom I found very attractive, then again a similarly
attractive Swede in Paris. I also like men from Basel, actually no longer
quite so (listing t.[he] various). Once I thought I liked the Dutch. But I
think that, although they are reliable and faithful, they are quite limited.
I wouldn’t like to marry a Frenchman.
Freud: This is quite a Leporello’s aria, as in Don Juan. Catalogue Aria is what
it’s called. So my idea that in the dream you present yourself as a counterpart
to Don Juan was right after all.
I believe this is why I am scared of cats: I remember that once a child
touched me with the fur of a cat at t.[he] genitalia, a kind of masturbation.
Then, when I held the cat
(4)
on my lap I suddenly pressed it against me. I was aware of the underly-
ing intention and I thought: what if it understood me and I was afraid
when I caught its eyes.
When Adolf broke with Ruth, he asked me one day: Do you also believe
that it is necessary? I
said: Yes, I am certain. He told her on the very same day, and I heard
him cry in his room. It broke my heart.62 That night I had a dream:
Grandpapa (who, in reality, had died about half a year before) was
lying in the bed all yellow, a dying man. I stepped to the bed and I
strangled him. He knew what I was up to and looked at me with
his eyes, terrible, but I did it all the same. When I woke up I had to
cry and I thought this meant that it was me who dealt the deathly
blow to Adolf’s dying love. The eyes were ghastly. it [sic] was like
the fear of the cat’s glare, where I was also afraid that it might
understand me.
Fr: This dream seems extreme—
(5)
ly important to me.63
(6) (7) (8) (9) (10) (11) (12) (13) (14)
64
I am withdrawing from F.
(15)
Dream: I attend a lecture about
Autochists
Comp.[osite] of | masochist
| autist perh. auto-erotists
Today I am dancing in front of the mirror as I did as a child because I

am on my own again.
Fr: You felt sorry for your brother who was beaten by the father, (actually at
first you had the wish to be in his place.) All these objects, the maimed,65 are sub-
stitutes i.[n] p.[part] but i Now that you66 are withdrawing your libido from
Fr., this compassion turns onto yourself (auto-, masochist [)]. Your enormous
compassion was originally directed toward yourself. That means that you
can control this excessive compassion for the others, as it principally derives
from the ego. You were the wronged one. The mother had the child instead
of you.
Then all the same67 you wanted to be like the brother. Either to be a woman and
have a child or to be a man with the penis. In the dee still deeper layer the small
is the same: child/penis68
(16)
You really got the short end of the stick, both lit.[erally] and fig.[uratively], that
is why you pity all the maimed69 part[icularly] the castrated, i.e. only e.g. the
blind 70d like Fr.71 the one-eyed (goddess with one arm missing72) The immense
desire to be a man resp.[ectively] to posses a penis shows in this73 compulsion
to fall in love.
The material is like tuff,74 from which those wonderful Roman buildings
are made, solidified lava, from which everything can be made Only that
there is an eruption from time to time, since it is a volcano. Enormous
passions but also an extraordinary sobrieties [sic].
Clear as mountain water75
(17)
Dream: 10 June
France76 gives me saccharin. I say: Thank you, I’m passing.
Dream of 11 June.
I am sitting in an express train, which enters a big station in a foreign
town. People are shouting: Boche, sale boche!77 I think: this happens to
me for the first time. Then I am in the customs office with Adolf, there is
a crowd. Behind me 78 sits an elderly blind man who presses me against
him I have an uncomfortable feeling and I believe Adolf says: When he

keeps his eyes wide open, opens them wide, one does not see that he is
blind (he does it on purpose in order to dissimulate). Later we are back
with a [female] officer in the customs office and we look for my coat,
which got lost. It is very dear to me, but we do not find it. Adolf is I
think a little inept.
(18)
Then we are at home, probably in the apartment Weinbergstr[asse] 179
or perhaps even earlier and Berta helps looking for the coat. I am glad I
call her “Du”80 but the coat is not to be found.
1.)
So I take a pass on the sugar substitute, i.e. on the caresses, which are81
only a substitute themselves.
2.)
The people shout sale boche! i.e. what these Slovenes do not like in me,
they see this piece of resistance or self control as a characteristic of the
boche, a practical soul, who is incapable of flying high. Sale—France let
me know that his comrades consider me to be the mistress of S. [sic] or
of himself.
The man who sits behind me is my father castrated apparently as a
punishment for the embrace. When he opens his eyes wide one can-
not see that he is blind. In reality my father cannot in fact open his
eyes
(19)
wide.
I am looking for my coat, that is, for my masculinity, per.[haps] the for
a man.
Berta loved my brother more because he was a boy.
Why does she help me
Then I dreamed82 a steam fly83 was on the ceiling high above me and
I was afraid it might fall down on me. I was lying in bed. Freud was
there, too.
The steam fly is a child, namely—“From Heaven Above to Earth I

Come”84—a Baby Jesus,85 conceived from God. France commented my
concern that the semen might penetrate the fabric by saying that this
would be procreation by the Holy Ghost. The steam fly is thus also of
him. He is just as big. Or the beetle is big because it is supernatural,
being a child of the H[o]l[y] Ghost.
It is also my father’s child, because Fr. is in the room as a father substitute.
(20)
14 June
Dream:
2 little boys jump about in a garden bordering a steep slope in. There
also were stalactite grottos—I was afraid they might over slip.
A lady asked me where I stayed, she was youthful, blond, a bit rouged.
I told her about the boarding house Döbling.86 Then I saw I was told
that she herself was the manager of that boarding house, who is much
older [in reality]. I was disgusted by this pretence, and wondered why I
had not recognised her in spite of it. But not even my grandmother had
recognised her. (In the dream she was alive) Then I looked at the lady,
took off the pince-nez and looked at her through the lorgnette.
(21)
The 2 lit.[tle] boys are the male member.
Fr: Duplication often indicates castration.
I am afraid that t.[he] penis o.[f] France might slide into my vagina. As a
punishment he is castrated. The lady looks like Minka,87 blond, slightly
rouged. Also Richard’s sister, who play-acted a lot.
Fr: In fact it was you yourself who turned a “wrong” face toward Minka.
In the dream I turn this around. The manager of the boarding house is
my mother, who here enters as a rival. The
“Neither did the Grandmama see through the (my) disguise”: Once,
when I was with her, about 5 years old, I was at Ernst Israel’s88 in the
garden. At night, just before bedtime. In the shed he lifted my dress
and touched me. When I came upstairs Grandmama said: What have
you done? I realised that she knew everything, although I could not
explain how she could have seen down into the shed from the veranda.
Yesterday France embraced me on the stairs in front of the boarding
house, which is also entwined by vine
(22)
leaves.
“So the Grandmama had already figured the my behaviour out” is in
reverse in the dream, as the pretence is passed from my person to the
other part.
Yesterday Today there was another love scene between Fr. and myself
Dream 1, 16 June
I tell somebody word by word what the dancer told me yesterday: e.g.,
that she believed Minka was my mother. Mrs Lüchinger89 replies: A lit-
tle monkey that is brought here from his home’s south.[ern] climate,
gets a very different face (an unhappy sickly shrunken face, she says)
Explanation:
The dancer said e.g. that she took Minka for my mother.
Fr: People are extremely resourceful when they surrender to their
unconscious.
(23)
Mrs Lüchinger replies: She is the only woman to put up a certain com-
petition for her daughter.
Fr: So she relates to the manager of the boarding house—the mother in yester-
day’s dream—who was also a competition.
Addendum to yest.[erday’s] dream: I use the lorgnette to look at the
manager of the boarding house so as to annoy her. A clear motif of
defiance. The little monkey: Minka, I thought, was quite nice back in
her own country. Here in the foreign environment she derailed a.[nd]
became sad. This morning France made plans what we could do, how
we would live together in Siberia. I imagine Siberia to be very cold, so
one could think of Switzerland as a southern home. “Then I’d be laugh-
ing on the other side of my face.”
The little monkey also reminds me of the little monkey that was stand-
ing on Grandmama’s writing desk. I was always asking: What does the
little monkey think of me? Now it might be sad.
(24)
Dream: A terrible animal, a kind of beetle with wings is in the air and
wants to bite me. It has the body of a shrimp and 2 horns like a snail.
I think “stag beetle. As the stag panteth after water, so thirsts my soul
after God.”90 I’ve never heard a stag pant for love X.91 The animal flies
like the firefly in the Chinese fairy tale, which was a god and flew into
the woman’s mouth and impregnated her.92 It has 2 horns—castration.
a crawfish’s body—crabs move backwards—the member moves
upwards, against gravity, thus against nature.
X Salts of hartshorn: laxative or emetic, thus an abort-inducing agent.
Yesterday debate about abortion “Against nature” refers to this.
(25)
When I was 4 years old I called for Papa in the night 93I felt something
solid underneath me. He came, it was a lump of faeces. I was proud and
not at all embarrassed, despite my age, which amazed me later. This gift
was apparently a child.
Dream: I am sitting in a railway train and am traveling with Minka and
a young man (France or Tag.94[)] He buys me across the river Rhine
into Germany. The landscape is inexpressibly beautiful, tall dark trees,
everything has a distinct shine because it was raining, a peculiar shim-
mering rain. The young man buys me a newspaper, a kind of funny
magazine, and a very silly one at that. A kind of illustrated story is in it:
“How to hold off an ardent lover.” Everything was idiotic. One It was
a complicated procedure. One hands him something like a peashooter
(Busch).95 out of which comes fire. (In any case, he can no longer kiss.[)]
In the dream, I am telling Freud about it, and when he
(26)
asks why I let him buy me the newspaper, I answer: I’m so just so
dependent.
The dream ridicules Fr’s advice, which is called idiotic. I am doing
exactly the opposite, I am even going on my honeymoon with Fr, after
all, the fact that Minka is present only proves it, so there are persons that
represent the obstacle present in the dream to mask96 what is going on.
R. wanted to go to Germany with me for your honeymoon. This beau-
tiful landscape with the fructifying rain is seen through t.[he] strange
light of a passion.
F: You are under the rule of the defiance against t.[he] parents.
(He believes that this explains my love for the most part, but that’s not
true. Oh my God. How I love him.)
(27)
19th dream:
Fr. has stolen something, we are in the street and have to flee because of
it. We want to take a tramway, but I say a car is better, it is faster. Then
we are in a house and I want to put on other clothes, over or underneath
the ones I’m wearing, so people won’t recognise me. But as soon as I’ve
done that, it is too hot, I cannot stand it.
*
A policeman is chasing us97
Notes
1. I thank Ulrike May for pointing out some of my transcription mistakes.
AK.
2. Dividing line in original.
3. Double dividing line in original.
4. In the biblical narration, Adam fathers three sons after expulsion from
the Garden of Eden: Cain, Abel, and Seth. In addition, the book Genesis
(5:4) mentions further sons and daughters, who remain unnamed.
“Adam Had Seven Sons”, however, is a popular children’s song.
5. Word is hardly legible; unclear reference.
6. Swiss German in the original (“The Hungerueli Isegrind devours his
seven little children”). Hungerueli Isegrind is a fairytale figure from a
Swiss nursery rhyme.
7. The reference most likely alludes to Schnitzler’s novella The Shepherd’s
Pipe (1911).
8. Half a page is left empty here.
9. Here is an ink stain.
10. Abrupt “obstructions” were considered symptoms of schizophrenia.
“Externally, ‘thought-deprivation’ is manifested in the form of ‘obstruc-
tions’. The examiner suddenly receives no answer to his questions and
the patient then states that he is unable to answer as his thoughts were
‘taken away’.” (Jung, 1907, p. 87).
11. A friend’s name.
12. A friend’s name.
13. Psychanalyse (instead of Psychoanalyse) in the original, which at the time

was common terminology in Switzerland.
14. Translator’s note: gegen (“against”) in the original.
15. Translator’s note: es träumte mir (“I was being dreamed”) in the
original.
16. “Everything, however, which appears conspicuously in the dream as a
speech can be referred to real speeches which have been made or heard
by the dreamer himself.” (Freud, 1900a, p. 163).
17. After the ancient Greek city of Smyrna, located at the Gulf of Izmir.
Smyrna carpets enjoyed great popularity in 19th century Europe.
18. Freud, 1905e.
19. Village in the canton Appenzell-Ausserrhoden, where the young
Anna Guggenbühl stayed in a home for sick children. She had a deli-
cate constitution, coughed a lot, and was prone to diseases of the lungs.
The climate in Teufen was thought to alleviate such conditions.
20. That is, to the grandparents’ house in this district, which was incorpo-
rated into Zurich in 1893.
21. Zurich street along the Sihl, in the vicinity of Bahnhofstrasse.
22. A recreational home that was built in Knollingen (Gufelstock), Engi GL
municipality, where Anna Guggenbühl was sent during vacations when
she was six or seven years old. Her two brothers also went. This home
was also a convalescence facility for bronchitis and pneumonia patients.
23. Heavily crossed out. Word barely legible.
24. Faust I, Dungeon, Margaret:
“If the mountain we had only passed!/There sits my mother upon a
stone./I feel an icy shiver!/
There sits my mother upon a stone,/And her head is wagging ever./
She beckons, she nods not, her heavy head falls o’er;/She slept so
long that she wakes no more./She slept while we were caressing:/
Ah, those were the days of blessing!” (Lines 4564–4573, Faust by
Johann Wolfgang Goethe, trans. Bayard Taylor, 2005–2014, Hazleton:
Electronic Classics Series, http://www2.hn.psu.edu/faculty/jmanis/
goethe/goethe-faust.pdf [last accessed 25 February 2015].
25. Translator’s note: Swiss and Austrian term for high school diploma
examination. Matura is also the general entrance qualification for
university.
26. Tributary of the Rhine in Switzerland.
27. From this place to the next “Fr” (“You are free to insert the symbols
yourself” etc.) runs a slightly wavy arrow on the left margin.
28. Here is a drawing of a symbol for femininity.
29. “[T]he sun […] is nothing but another sublimated symbol for the
father.” (Freud, 1911c).
30. Swiss carnival rhyme for the Fasnacht, when traditionally special
Fasnachtsküchlein (“carnival pastries”) are prepared.
31. Word is hardly legible.
32. Translator’s note: Wasserschmöcker in original. Swiss German, literally
translates as “water sniffers”.
33. This topic concerned Freud a lot at the time. Two years earlier, he had
published a paper discussing it (1919e); one of the presented cases
seemed to connect to his daughter Anna (see Young-Bruehl, 1988),
whose analysis (from October 1918 to the spring of 1922, with the sec-
ond instalment between May 1924 and the summer of 1925; see Young-
Bruehl, 1988 and Roazen, 1969) overlapped with the period when Freud
was treating Anna Guggenbühl.
34. par exemple = for example.
35. The source for this parable could not be located.
36. See introduction.
38. Here follow three empty pages before the next entry.
39. Translator’s note: schön (“beautiful”) instead of the correct schon
(“already”) in the original.
40. In 1821, during a convalescent vacation at Marienbad, at 72 years of
age, Goethe fell in love with Ulrike von Levetzow, who was only 17
at the time. Levetzow would turn down his proposal of marriage two
years later. Goethe would channel the feeling of hurt upon this rejection
in his Marienbad Elegy.
41. Word is hardly legible, and twice written over; the final result reads
something like “Hannorrhihden”.
42. That is, “He’s a good person, but” etc.
43. Translator’s note: Abort in the original, which in German can mean “toi-
let” and “abortion”.
44. Translator’s note: Freud here also uses the term Abort, see previous
note.
45. Translator’s note: gegen (“against”) in original.
46. Translator’s note: schon (“already”) instead of the correct schön (“beauti-
ful”) in the original.
47. A lilac leaf signifies goodness deep within.
48. A fellow student.
49. Probably the Swiss psychiatrist Franz Riklin (1878–1938). Contributed
studies to the Jungian association; first secretary of the International
Psycho-Analytical Association) and, with Jung, editor of the Korre-
spondenzblatt. He followed Jung after the split from Freud. See Wieser,
2001, pp. 36 & 172–175. However, nothing is known about a possible
connection between Anna Guggenbühl and Franz Riklin.
50. Some single letters are written here. They are barely legible and are
crossed out.
51. Fellow student and lifelong friend.
52. Literally, a “treatment house”, i.e. a hospital or nursing home.
53. Hupel (“bumpy”) in original. However, the word is hardly leg-
ible; also possible: Hugel (perhaps misspelled for Hügel, little hill or
bump).
54. A reference to Leo Tolstoy’s novel Resurrection (1899).
55. Director at the Burghölzli, see introduction.
56. Word is a little hard to read.
57. Corrected (probably) over the letters “Bl”.
58. Translator’s note: Mitesser = blackheads. Literally, “fellow eaters”, often
with the connotation of parasites or freeloaders.
59. Closing quotation marks at this place in original.
60. Municipality in the Interlaken district, Canton of Bern.
61. The number “9” corrected over another number, probably “7”.
62. Translator’s note: “Es schnitt mir furchtbar in die Seele” (literally, “it cut
deeply into my soul”) in the original.
63. Written in the upper margin. The rest of the page is empty. Seven empty
pages follow.
64. Written in the lower margin. The rest of the page is empty.
65. Translator’s note: Verstummelte (word does not exist) instead of the cor-
rect Verstümmelte (“the maimed”) in the original. Stumm = mute.
66. Word hardly legible.
67. Doch (= all the same), hardly legible; also possibly: noch (“still”).
68. Cf. Freud, 1900a.
69. Translator’s note: again, the incorrect verstummelt in original, see earlier
note.
70. In front of this “d” is a doodle that looks like a smaller opening
bracket.
71. Meaning unclear.
72. Refers to the so-called Venus de Milo, a statue on permanent display at
the Louvre in Paris, where Anna Guggenbühl visited often.
73. Word is barely legible.
74. Reddish brown tuff, a porous, volcanic natural stone, was used by the
Romans to build mansions and (thermal) baths.
75. Numerous lines at the bottom of the page are left empty.
76. A Vienna acquaintance.
77. Roughly translates as “dirty scoundrel”; derogatory term the French
use for Germans.
78. One letter crossed out.
79. Name of a street in Zurich; Anna Guggenbühl’s ancestral home.
80. In German, du (“you”) is used as a form of address for friends, family,

and associates, as opposed to the formal sie (“you”).
81. Word is barely legible.
82. Translator’s note: es träumte mir (“I was being dreamed”) in the original.
83. Schwabenkäfer (“Swabian bug”) in original = Blatella germanica, also
known as German cockroach.
84. Title of a popular German Christmas song.
85. Translator’s note: Christkind in the original. In German-language
Christian mythology, the Christkind stands for Baby Jesus, but also—in
its more commercially inclined incarnation—for the ghostly entity that
puts the presents under the tree on Christmas Eve.
86. A boarding house with the address Hofzeile 29, in Vienna’s 19th district
(which is called Döbling). Other analysands of Freud also stayed there.
87. Person could not be identified.
88. Person could not be identified.
89. An acquaintance of Anna Guggenbühl’s parents; her husband was a
business associate of the father.
90. “As the hart panteth after the water brooks, so panteth my soul after
thee, O God” (Psalm 42:1).
91. Reference to a footnote at the bottom of the page in the original.
92. The source of this fairy tale is unidentified.
93. One illegible mark at this place, probably an “f” crossed out.
94. Person not identified.
95. Possibly a reference to Wilhelm Busch’s story The Blowgun. Anna
Guggenbühl had studied German literature for a year before she turned
to medicine, and knew Busch practically by heart. http://germanstories.
vcu.edu/busch/puster_e.html [last accessed 26 February 2015].
96. Hardly legible; perhaps also: mark.
97. Here, in the centre of the page, the entries suddenly end.
Further reading
Cremerius, J. (1984). Freud bei der Arbeit über die Schulter geschaut. In:
Vom Handwerk des Psychoanalytikers: Das Werkzeug der psychoanalytischen
Technik (pp. 326–363). Stuttgart: Frommann-Holzboog.
Ferenczi, S., & Rank, O. (1924). The Development of Psychoanalysis. New York:
Dover, 1956.
Freud, S. (1937d). Constructions in Analysis. S. E., 23: 257–270. London:
Hogarth.
Freud, S., & Freud, A. (2006). Briefwechsel 1904–1938. Frankfurt: Fischer.
Freud, S., & Pfister, O. (1980). Briefe 1909–1939. Frankfurt: Fischer.
Jones, E. (1957). The Life and Work of Sigmund Freud, Vol. 3. New York:
Basic.
Laplanche, J. (1998). Die Psychoanalyse als Anti-Hermeneutik. Psyche,
52(7): 605–618.
May, U. (2006). Freud’s patient calendars: 17 analysts in analysis with Freud
(1910–1920). Psychoanalysis & History, 9(2): 2007, 153–200.
Pohlen, M. (2006). Freuds Analyse. Die Sitzungsprotokolle Ernst Blums.
Reinbeck: Rowohlt.
Roazen, P. (1995). How Freud Worked. Northvale, NJ: Aronson.
Sachs, E. (1913). Psychoanalyse oder Psychanalyse? Internationale Zeitschrift
für ärztliche Psychoanalyse, 1: 100.
Wortis, J. (1954). Fragments of an Analysis with Freud. New York: Simon &
Schuster.
References
Freud, S. (1905e). Fragment of an Analysis of a Case of Hysteria. S. E., 7:
3–122. London: Hogarth.
Freud, S. (1911c). Psycho-Analytic Notes on an Autobiographical Account
of a Case of Paranoia (Dementia Paranoides). S. E., 12: 3–82. London:
Hogarth.
Freud, S. (1919e). A Child is Being Beaten. S. E., 17: 177–204. London: Hogarth.
Jung, C. G. (1907). The Psychology of Dementia Praecox. Authorized Translation
with an Introduction by Frederick Peterson and A. Brill. New York: Journal
of Nervous and Mental Diseases, 1909.
Roazen, P. (1969). Brother Animal. New Brunswick, NJ: Transaction, 1990.
Tolstoy, L. (1899). Resurrection. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2009.
Wieser, A. (2001). Zur früheren Psychoanalyse in Zürich 1900–1914. Medical
doctoral thesis, Zurich.
Young-Bruehl, E. (1988). Anna Freud. A Biography. New York: Summit, 1990.
CHAPT ER TWO
Illustrations
T
his chapter offers a small collection of visual material relating to
Anna Guggenbühl’s life and diary. Illustrations 1a, 1b, and 1c are
reproductions of the letter Freud sent to his future analysand:
first, the envelope with Anna’s address, and second, the pages in which
Freud outlined his conditions for treatment with him. Illustration 2
shows Anna at 27, while in analysis with Freud. The following pages
give insight into the diary proper: they reproduce the cover of the first
notebook (Illustration 3), and some pages of her notes (Illustrations 4,
5, 6, 7, and 8). Illustration 9 features Anna at age three, which is also the
time of her earliest memories. Next, some photographs of family and
friends: a portrait of Anna with her parents and two younger brothers,
Adolf and Walter, taken around 1900 (Illustration 10); a picture of Adolf
and the sculptor Arnold H in Paris in 1920 (Illustration 11); one showing
Anna in Paris in 1935, when her four children were already born (Illus-
tration 12); and finally, the portraits of Adolf (Illustration 13), Anna’s
mother Anna Guggenbühl-Leuthold (Illustration 14), and Arnold H
(Illustration 15), all taken in 1920 or 1921. Anna married the sculptor
Arnold H in 1923 in Paris.
33
1a. The envelope of the letter from Freud to Anna Guggenbühl,

March 1921.
I L L U S T R AT I O N S 35
1b. Letter from Freud—page 1.

1c. Letter from Freud—page 2.

2. Anna Guggenbühl, in the year of her analysis with Freud in Vienna.

3. Cover of the first diary.

4. Diary I, page 1.
5. Diary I, page 31, Goethe.

6. Diary 1, page 32, Chlorophyll.

7. Diary II, page 2, sculptur.

8. Diary II, page 3 Leporello.

9. Anna, aged 3 years (1897), at the age of her first memories.

10. Anna, aged 6 years, with her parents and her brothers Adolf and
Walter (1900).
11. Brother Adolf at the workshop of the sculptor, Arnold H, who

married Anna in 1923 (Paris 1920).
12. Anna in Paris (1935).

13. Anna’s brother Adolf.

14. Anna’s mother.

15. My grandfather, the sculptor.

CHAPT ER THREE
Being analysed by Freud in 1921—notes

about the analytic process*
Anna Koellreuter†
O
n 20 March 1921, Freud writes to Pfister:
Dear Dr. Pfister
I should of course be glad to accept a woman doctor for self-

analysis, provided that she is prepared to pay the now usual forty
francs an hour and remains long enough for there to be a prospect
of getting somewhere, i.e. from four to six months; a shorter period
is not worth while. I could certainly take her on October 1; whether
I could take her earlier it is impossible to say. I am waiting to hear
whether two patients due to begin on April 1 are really coming. You
do not mention in your letter how much time the young woman is
willing to devote to analysis. How her recent marriage will accord
with an analysis lasting for many months I cannot say, so further
information is desirable. (Freud & Pfister, 1963, pp. 81–82)
* Koellreuter, A. (2007). Being analysed by Freud in 1921—the diary of a patient. Psycho-

analysis and History Special Issue: Unknown Freud, 9(2): 137–151.
†
This chapter has been translated from the German by Ernst Falzeder.
51
The young doctor is my grandmother. As a matter of fact, she had not

recently married but had been engaged to a fellow student for seven
years. She was in analysis with Freud in Vienna from April to July 1921.
In our family, we knew little about this analysis. She herself hardly
talked about it. Why? This remains a secret that she took to the grave
with her. I have been preoccupied by this fact all my life, particularly
since I stayed with her in Zurich for a couple of years and had a close
and warm relationship with her. We often talked about her work as a
psychiatrist at the Burghölzli, the cantonal psychiatric university clinic
there.
First, I would like to recount how I happened upon the diary. Second,
I will present some biographical data about my grandmother. Third,
I will say a few words about the format of the diary. There will then fol-
low the main part of this chapter, namely, five extracts from the diary.
Finally, I will present for discussion my thoughts on how Freud worked
and, in particular, how he worked with transference.
My grandmother died in 1982 at the age of eighty-eight. Her claim
that she had been in analysis with Freud sounded like an interesting
but not quite realistic story to me. After her death, I sometimes found
myself thinking: “Well, anybody could claim to have been in analysis
with Freud …” In 1989, my grandfather died at the age of ninety-five in
Zurich, in the house in which he and his wife, together with their four
children, had lived since 1939. It took months afterwards to empty out
the house.
Then, one day, my mother called me on the phone, buzzing with
excitement: “You know what I’ve found? The original letter from Freud
to Grandma, in which he writes about the conditions for the analysis
with him, dated 23 March 1921!” The letter reads as follows:
Dear Doctor
Given the present onrush [of patients] it suits me very much
that you represent both of the patients promised by Oberholzer
and Pfister. I am answering by return of post so that we can come
to a quick decision. I cannot take you on before I know whether my
fees are acceptable to you, and your schedule for me, about which
you said nothing. I charge 40 francs1 in your currency per hour, to
be paid monthly, but cannot accept anybody who cannot stay until
July 15. This last point alone is decisive. In view of the fact that time
B E I N G A N A LY S E D B Y F R E U D I N 1 9 2 1 53
is pressing, I ask you to answer by telegram, and will then let you
know definitively, maybe in the same way.
If everything is in order, it is important that you arrive in Vienna
before 1 April.
With collegial regards,2

Freud
Shortly afterwards, my mother called me again: “You’ll never guess

what I found this time! Two diary notebooks, like exercise books, in
which Grandma wrote down things that happened during her analysis
in Vienna!”
I took the books and read them in one go. For many years I was
unable to deal with them in more depth, however, probably because
of the intimate character of the notes, and put them aside for the time
being. A few years later I picked them up again. I thought my resist-
ances had subsided. Far from it! When I began to work with the diaries
and to reflect on them, new resistances arose, which I found difficult to
deal with. Many questions came to mind. What is a diary? Why does
one write a diary? Did my grandmother write it for posterity? Or only
for herself? And if she wrote it only for herself, why didn’t she throw it
away rather than keeping it? I kept a diary myself during my analysis,
as did some of my colleagues to whom I talked. I used it as a means of
sorting out certain things in my mind. After it had fulfilled its function
I disposed of it. Was it because it had to do with Freud that my grand-
mother could not throw away her diary? Did she want to keep it as a
historical document? I do not know. So I asked myself: Would she have
wanted me to read the diary of her analysis? Would she have agreed to
have parts of it published by me? Well, I suppose she would …
Biographical details
Anna Guggenbühl grew up in Zurich, together with her two younger
brothers. One of them became a publisher, the other a painter. She
herself at first studied German language and literature, and then—as
one of only a few women at the time—medicine and psychiatry. When
she started her analysis, she was 27 years old. She had already com-
pleted her medical studies, and had spent her first years of internship
under Bleuler at the Burghölzli in Zurich.3 As mentioned above, she
had been engaged for many years, but the relationship with her fiancé
had been quite ambivalent. The wedding had already been planned in
great detail, and was supposed to take place in the autumn of 1921. My
grandmother had ever-growing doubts about her future, however, but
did not find the strength to disengage herself from this relationship,
and this was precisely her reason for undergoing analysis. She often
talked about this with me, but not about the analysis itself.
After Freud’s letter arrived, it took her only two days to come to a
definitive decision (the exact dates had only been settled by Freud’s
letter of March 23), namely, to go to Vienna and for four months to
leave everything else to one side. When my mother cleared her parents’
house, batches of letters were discovered, among them those that my
grandmother had received during the months she had spent in Vienna.
Most of them were from her father, a few from her mother, some from
her fiancé, and finally two from my grandfather, whom she had got to
know shortly before. It is evident from the content of these letters that
she did not respond to them, or only very superficially, during those
four months. We may speculate—but have no way of knowing—that
Freud himself told her not to write back so as to ensure some “absti-
nence”, in which she could come to a decision. Thus her father writes
to her after a little more than two weeks: “Actually, I’m very angry with
you, but this won’t last, I can’t help it. You should have written.“ And,
at the end of the letter: “Pull yourself together now, including all your
strength, pleasure, and also pain, write what you want to write, and
whether Freud gives you Freud”4 (17 April 1921). In a later letter he
writes, with an ironic twist: “We have just received your letter that is so
rich in content. Couldn’t Freud cure you of your aversion to writing?“
(18 May 1921) And, still later: “How is this Professor Freud, and how
does he actually behave?“ (13 June 1921).
The setting was as agreed upon in writing, and is in accordance with
what Ulrike May (2006, 2007) and Christfried Tögel (2006) have dis-
covered in their research into Freud’s appointment calendars for the
years between 1910 and 1920. The analysis began on Friday, 1 April
1921, and was conducted for one hour a day, six days a week, including
Saturdays, as was the custom at the time. We know this from Freud’s
invoices, which were paid by her father.5 The last analytic hour presum-
ably took place on Thursday, 14 July, because on the next day, 15 July,
Freud left for his holidays, and went to Badgastein with his sister-in-
law (Jones, 1957, p. 79; cf. also Freud & A. Freud, 2006, p. 322). We recall
that it was one of Freud’s conditions that she remain until July 15. One
last reference to my grandmother is found in Freud’s letter to Pfister of
29 July 1921, from Badgastein (see below). We do not know whether she
stayed on in Vienna afterwards, or if so, for how long. We may assume
from one of the letters she received from her mother that the latter
would have wished her to continue the analysis. Her mother wrote (17
June 1921):
I also wondered if Prof. Freud couldn’t give you an hour a day

during the holidays, too. Such an interruption is really not good,
especially as he himself emphasises in his book that there is some-
thing like a Sunday hour,6 which has to be resolved on Monday.
You could easily go to the same place where he spends his holidays,
or what do you think about that? How long are Freud’s holidays
anyway? Six weeks? Or longer? It’s all so difficult … You know, in
his book Freud writes that there are patients who are treated for
one year and longer.
The diary
I do not know what I expected or anticipated, but certainly not what I
found, namely, a collection of scattered thoughts and statements in the
form of a dialogue with Freud, in what seem to be direct quotes. She
noted down what she found important, above all how Freud reacted to
what she said. It is not possible to follow the analytic process in these
hours.
This diary has a form different from others we know of. Ernst Blum’s
diary about his four-month analysis with Freud in 1922 (Pohlen, 2006)
perhaps comes closest, but the two diaries and their backgrounds dif-
fer substantially. Blum saw himself as Freud’s pupil and apprentice, on
his way to becoming an analyst himself. My grandmother’s goal in her
analysis, however, was to get a clear idea of whether or not, after seven
years of engagement, she really wanted that marriage to take place as
planned in September 1921, as she told me several times. As we know
from the letters, her parents never explicitly objected to breaking the
engagement, but neither did they offer any help or advice. She told
me that she was left alone with her problem, and also that breaking an
engagement was quite something at the time. The notes in her diary
are not well-rounded descriptions of the analytic hours, but apparently
arbitrarily chosen thoughts or dream segments, which she probably

wrote down after the hours. Nevertheless, we can obtain some infor-
mation from them about Freud’s way of working.
The diary consists of two exercise books in which she wrote her notes
at irregular intervals. The first analytic hour took place on 1 April; how-
ever, her first entries are not dated, they are jotted-down notes that do
not seem to reveal any structure of the hours. Only on page 7 do we find
the first date: 15 April. The last entries in the second book are dated 16
June. In April she sometimes wrote daily, for May there are two entries,
and four in June. The total number of sessions until the end of the anal-
ysis on 14 July 1921 is about eighty.
The first thing that catches the eye is how willingly, right from the
beginning, my grandmother talked about sexual matters (as did Blum,
by the way)—as if she wanted to present to Freud what he wanted to
hear. Among the books she possessed there are most of Freud’s psycho-
analytic writings to 1920, as well as some by Rank, Stekel, Pfister, and
the like. She had two copies of Beyond the Pleasure Principle (Freud, 1920g)
and of Three Essays on the Theory of Sexuality (Freud, 1905d); both are so
well thumbed that they nearly come apart. We may conclude that she
studied parts of Freud’s theory intensively, and that in all probability she
had some knowledge of psychoanalysis when she began her analysis.
With regard to Freud’s interpretations, three things in particular
struck me in her notes. First, they are suggestive and leading; second,
they are symbolistic; and third, they are reductive.
I will present five extracts and then add some remarks of my own.
First extract (pages 1–6, undated, i.e. at the beginning)

The very first entry reads:
g: When I was four years old, in Strasbourg, there was my little

cousin, a fat baby. I pinched her, and when I was alone I always
bullied her until she cried. Once I pulled out all the saplings on
the balcony, I thought they were weeds. Incidentally, I discovered
masturbation then, when I pressed myself against a cornice.
fr: This is a very remarkable memory. Did you also badger your little
brother?
g: I turned him on his back, for instance, so that he could no longer
get up.
fr: You started to masturbate when you felt lonely. You were no longer
loved as much as you were as a single child. So you took revenge
on the little child and on the symbol, the sapling.
g: When my brother W. was born, I asked when I saw him: Why
doesn’t he cry?
fr: So you would have liked to see him in a crying state, like your
cousin?
fr: One can clearly see three levels in your life: the uppermost one is
your present conflict with R., etc. The one in the middle concerns
your relation to your brother. You are still quite unconscious of the
deepest level, which is connected with your parents, and which
is the most important one. It is from this that the relation to the
brother is derived.
Later:
g: I tell Freud: When I went to the Gymnasium7 I thought I would like

to love a young man who was immensely sad, and I would make
life possible for him, and then he would be happy.
fr: Like with your brother.
g: Then I thought that later I would like to have seven children; I did
not think of the father.
fr: Seven men, actually. Seven?
g: Adam had seven sons. Papedöne8 hangs his seven sons. The Hun-
gerueli Isegrind devours his seven little children.9 I believe male
cats devour their offspring.
fr: You are coming so near the secret of the deepest level that I can
break it to you: you loved your father and never forgave him his
betrayal with the mother. You wanted to be the mother of the child.
So you wished the mother, who took the lover away from you,
dead. Bit by bit you will produce evidence for this, and the riddle
of why you cannot get away from your brother will be solved.
Later:
fr: Three layers are easily recognisable in your life, the present one,
which concerns the brothers, and the deepest one, which is con-
nected with the parents. What is pathological is the long-lasting
indecision whether or not you should marry R. The fact that no
decision is reached proves that something else must lie behind it,
something that is, as you recognise yourself, connected with the
brothers and the parents.
g: In Paris, I liked W. [the one brother] so much; suddenly he, and no
longer A. [the other brother], seemed to be my ideal.
fr: You glide from one to the other, just as you do with the lovers. The
lovers are brother substitutes, that’s why they are of the same age,
actually younger in a social sense.
g: I’d like to go to Russia; like those aristocratic sons and daughters
who left their families during the last revolution, I’d like to go
away and leave the milieu in which I do not belong. I am thinking
of that piece by Schnitzler, Der Flötenton [The sound of the flute].
fr: That is exactly your conflict.
Undated remark of Freud’s (p. 11):
fr: Last time we saw that you are bored, that you would like to love
somebody. Now there are two ways in analysis: some people have
to do everything, the others, where enough mental material is
present, deal with everything within their psyche. If possible, put
a stop to the adventures. Bear it and suffer want, so that every-
thing will come out all the more clearly in the analytic hour.
Second extract (p. 12, 18 April, “Dora”)

g: Dream: “I was lying in bed in the evening, the light was on. Then I
saw, on the left side of my head, disgusting, brownish stains on the
sheet. Repellent little worms moved in the liquid (they [the stains]
were still wet). I was disgusted and called my dad, and he was
here and just laughed a bit, he was not frightened. It was like when
I was a child and was scared, and he came.“ The Smyrna carpet in
the oriel has brownish stains from the coffee that A. [the brother]
and his friends drank there.
fr: So they are a bridge to the dream, to the brownish stains.
g: When I went to a café with the sculptor in my new dress, a young
artist spilled coffee on my dress. I smiled and said: No problem.
Once the sculptor embraced me. Afterwards there were stains on
my dress, but it was a different dress. He was terribly sorry, but I
said: No problem, really.
fr: So in the dream you call your father for help against the aggressions
of the young men. You take refuge in your father. Your uncon-
scious thus confirms my statement that your father was your first
lover. Have you read the study on a hysteric, Dora?
g: Yes, but I don’t remember anything.
fr: Your dream is completely modelled on Dora’s one. So you take the
place of Dora who, as we know, is in love with her father. At first
there comes the intellectual willingness, then one accepts evidence
from the unconscious, only then one admits it emotionally, and
finally, as a conclusion, direct memories appear. Your love of the
brother, conscious as it is, is not the deepest layer, and thus the
knowledge of its existence is useless. You cannot free yourself from
it because it has deeper roots.
Third extract (p. 21, 21 April, “The dream of the chessboard”)

g: Friends of A. and W. [the two brothers] were there, but they were
all a bit younger. They swam out into the lake, and the sun was
shining. O. was there, and he was very little; I help him get over
the wall because he couldn’t do it on his own, and in the garden
on the other side he suddenly threw himself on me and embraced
me. I was a bit surprised that such a little boy dared do that, and
I didn’t really like it because there were people who were watch-
ing. Then I had a sweet little jewel case. I said, “The lid looks like a
chessboard”, but when I opened it, it was not like a chessboard at
all. There were the loveliest things in it. For example, a little wed-
ding party, little people cut out of paper so they could stand up.
I wanted to give some to M. [the cousin], but I regretted it.
fr: The many friends …
g: They were all little, almost like children, O. in particular was very
little. I helped him get over the wall, that is, I seduced him to love.
fr: Let us insert the symbols that we know thanks to our insights.
g: Chessboard: My father recently said he had played chess with my
mother before they became engaged, and then he had asked her if
she wanted to be his queen.
fr: You can insert the symbols also yourself, so that you can make a
connection when you get stuck with the associations. Wall—this
is the wall that has to be surmounted to embrace you. It is the
hymen. The little jewel case is the female genital.
fr: The dream beautifully shows tendencies from the past. The box is
like a chessboard, that is, you are taking the place of the mother,
but afterwards: it is no chessboard after all, meaning, you turn
away from the father. The friends, the “little ones”, swimming
around there, are symbols for the male member. You help him
surmount the wall, that means, you want a real defloration that
eventually leads to marriage (the little wedding party in the box).
You begrudge your cousin M. the marriage. The sun is always the
father.
Later:
g: Once, but only once, when Dad threatened to beat A. [the brother]
as soon as we were home, I had a feeling of revulsion combined
with some interest, but it was gone when the threat was put into
action.
fr: This is the wish to be beaten yourself. Later on it takes the form of
wishing to be merely scolded. When resistances arise in the anal-
ysis you behave in a similar way because I am representing the
father; the idea that the cure is of no avail, for example, is already a
beginning of that. Your anxiety that you might make an even more
stupid choice in your marriage afterwards, because you wouldn’t
be able to endure it, is baseless, because the purpose of the cure is
precisely to enable you to control that instinct and thus to be able
to make a free choice of whom to marry, and not out of fear of
the instinct. This objection is reminiscent of the story of the goose
keeper and the horse keeper, who plan what they would do if they
hit the jackpot. The horse keeper describes the palace in which he
would live, the servants, etc. The goose keeper said he would just
ride his horse and herd his geese. The idea that you would be too
old to start a new life is all the more unjustified in that you pro-
longed your puberty to an extraordinary degree by your studies,
and have had little experience.
Pause [sic].
g: At Burghölzli10 there was a girl who was very intelligent and had
a fine grasp of psycholog.[ical] understanding, she was called
Anna.11 She wanted to herself learn stenography, but she did not
get past the very first page, she could not focus at all.
g: I, too, cannot focus any more.

fr: Aha, a Swiss national diagnosis!
Fourth extract, part one (p. 34, 25 April, “erotic transference”)

g: When Goethe was pretty old he wanted to marry a girl. In the past
I thought that she, of course, did not like the idea, but now I see
quite well that one might marry someone older. So this means that
I might want to marry you; I really like you very much.
fr: Now this is the transference of the old love and infatuation you
had for the father onto me. All the painful disappointments, the
jealousy, etc., will come to light later, too.
Fourth extract, part two (p. 35, 26 April, “erotic transference”)

g: In the waiting room I heard the patient who comes before me say
the word “chlorophyll”. I thought I could never come up with
such an association. I am terribly ignorant. I lack all humanistic
education, and I haven’t absorbed scientific education either.
fr: So you want to belittle yourself intellectually. Other women usu-
ally do it in physical matters. They might say they’ve got haemor-
rhoids, etc.
g: (Pause) Nothing comes to mind.
fr: So this is a special resistance that has to do with the transference.
g: I can’t tell you how much I like you; I think I’ve never loved any-
body this way before.
fr: This love of the father was so enormous that everything that came
later paled in comparison. People have no idea of the intensity of
the love of children; it only exists in potential form, after all, and is
not put into action.
g: When I was a child I always thought: let me never experience
unhappy love, because my love is greater than that of other
people.
fr: You are able to think all that only because you had already expe-
rienced disappointment at one time, which you did not remember
consciously. When you belittle yourself you do so to spoil your

love for me, just like e.g. the lady with the haemorrhoids.
Fifth extract (p. 2/II, 5 May, “Leporello”)

g: This morning I pricked my finger, there was a drop of blood, and
I thought this meant that I wanted to have a child. Snow White’s
mother pricked her finger when sewing, and wished for a child.
f: Since the libido is dammed up because it cannot reach the man, all
these wishes are surfacing here. This is also the purpose of absti-
nence.
g: In the dream I love a man. I think he bears many resemblances to
the sculptor, and I ask him where he comes from. He says, from
Brienz; and I think, obviously I have a particular fondness for
people from Brienz. I know, however, that basically I am loving
R. [the fiancé], and somehow this isn’t right. I have a particular
fondness for people from certain areas, from Luxembourg, for
example. I knew an intern at the Burghölzli, but unfortunately
he was already married, and there was the young Catholic priest
in London. Then there are the Norwegians. When I was nineteen
years old, I got to know a Norwegian at a skiing course, whom I
found very attractive, then again a similarly attractive Swede in
Paris. I also like men from Basle, actually no longer quite so (listing
of the various men). Once I thought I liked the Dutch. But I think
that, although they are reliable and faithful, they are quite limited.
I wouldn’t like to marry a Frenchman.
fr: This is quite a Leporello’s aria, as in Don Juan. Catalogue Aria is
what it’s called. So my idea that in the dream you present yourself
as a counterpart to Don Giovanni was right after all.
How Freud worked

Let me now add some reflections on how Freud worked. Regarding the
question of suggestive and leading interpretations, Freud writes: “The
danger of our leading a patient astray by suggestion, by persuading
him to accept things which we ourselves believe but which he ought
not to, has certainly been enormously exaggerated” (1937d, p. 262).
As far as his symbolic interpretations are concerned, he himself writes
in The Interpretation of Dreams: “As a rule the technique of interpreting
according to the dreamer’s free associations leaves us in the lurch

when we come to the symbolic elements in the dream-content.” (Freud,
1900a, p. 353 [added 1914]) And he adds: “We are thus obliged, in deal-
ing with those elements of the dream-content which must be recog-
nised as symbolic, to adopt a combined technique, which on the one
hand rests on the dreamer’s associations and on the other hand fills the
gaps from the interpreter’s knowledge of symbols” (ibid.). For Freud,
a knowledge of symbolism will “afford the most valuable assistance to
interpretation precisely at points at which the dreamer’s associations
are insufficient or fail altogether” (Freud, 1901a, pp. 684–685 [added
1911]).
The diary notes show that Freud seems to have been quite generous
with symbolic interpretations in this analysis. In Psychoanalysis as anti-
hermeneutics, Laplanche discusses Freud’s symbolism and states: “lor-
sque le symbolisme parle, les associations se taisent” [when symbolism
speaks, the associations are silent] (Laplanche, 1999, p. 249).
Did Freud put a stop to the flow of associations by his symbolic inter-
pretations, or did he, quite on the contrary, initiate them? Or did he get,
by virtue of his suggestive aptitude, precisely those answers and asso-
ciations that he wanted to get?
Finally, he reconstructively reduces expressions of transference
nearly exclusively to the infantile-sexual level. We can also find such
reductive interpretations of expressions of transference in other mem-
oirs of his analysands, such as in those by Wortis (1954), Doolittle (1956),
Blanton (1971), Dorsey (1976), Kardiner (1977), Blum (Pohlen, 2006) and
others, as well as in Freud’s technical writings (cf., Cremerius, 1984).
What interested me most in my grandmother’s notes was the ques-
tion: How did Freud really deal with transference in the analytic situ-
ation? Freud distinguishes between reconstruction and interpretation:
“‘Interpretation‘ applies to something that one does to some single ele-
ment of the material, such as an association or a parapraxis. But it is a
‘construction‘ when one lays before the subject of the analysis a piece of
his early history that he has forgotten” (Freud, 1937d, p. 261).
In the work just quoted, Freud also raises the question of how one
could verify whether or not a construction or reconstruction was cor-
rect. He discusses the meaning of the patient’s acceptance or rejection
of a reconstructive interpretation, and mentions the (unjust) “principle
of ‘heads I win, tails you lose’. That is to say, if the patient agrees with
us, then the interpretation is right; but if he contradicts us, that is only
a sign of his resistance, which again shows that we are right” (ibid.,
p. 257).
In their critical work The Development of Psychoanalysis, Ferenczi and
Rank (1924) deal, among others, with this rather questionable posi-
tion.12 They write that in the past ten years Freud had not published
any technical papers, and that this might be the reason why many
analysts “adhered too rigidly to these technical rules” (ibid., p. 2). One
might see the same danger in their own book, however, since Ferenczi
and Rank put forward some technical rules themselves. They refer
to Freud’s paper “Remembering, Repeating and Working-Through”
(Freud, 1914g), and hold that the wish to re-experience something—
repetition or acting out—should not be considered as mere resistance,
which would thus have to be avoided, but emphasise instead:
From the standpoint of the compulsion to repeat, it is, however, not

only absolutely unavoidable, that the patient should, during the
cure, repeat a large part of his process of development, but also, as
experience has shown, it is a matter of just those portions which
cannot be really experienced from memory, so that there is no other
way open to the patient than that of repeating, as well as no other
means for the analyst to seize the essential unconscious material.
(Ferenczi & Rank, 1924, p. 3)
Further on they add: “Thus we finally come to the point of attributing

the chief rôle in analytic technique to repetition instead of to remembering”
(ibid., p. 4, italics in original). Above all, they criticise that analytic
therapy is hindered by previous knowledge of psychoanalysis, and
that the main emphasis is put on remembering, while the affective
component—experiencing—is neglected (cf., Turnheim, 1996, p. 87).
They write: “An elimination, particularly of the intellectual resist-
ances, is being increasingly required since psycho-analysis has begun
to penetrate more generally into society, and people bring this knowl-
edge as a means of resistance into the cure” (Ferenczi & Rank, 1924,
p. 62).
They add that not only the analysand, but also the analyst, can have
too much previous knowledge. It often happens, they continue, “that
the associations of the patient were directed to the sexual factor at the
wrong time, or that they remained stuck at this point if—as so often
happens—he came to the analysis with the expectation that he must
constantly talk exclusively of his actual or infantile sexual life” (ibid.

p. 33).
Let us summarise. All this is about the “wish to re-experience” in
the transference, which cannot always be dissolved and transformed
into insight by interpretations. Consequently, there are “two kinds of
knowledge” according to Ferenczi and Rank, “one intellectual, the other
based on a deeper ‘conviction’” (ibid. p. 45). It further follows that there
is no analysis in which both analysand and analyst are not confronted
with a residue that cannot be interpreted, a residue that neither of them
is able to understand or dissolve by interpretations.
The way Ferenczi and Rank approach the problem of transference
was of particular importance to me in discussing Freud’s technique,
as it becomes evident in these diary notes. What they miss in the then
prevalent technique of interpretation is the importance, even crucial
importance, played by “the analytic situation as such of the patient”
(ibid., p. 30). The therapeutic effect, they argue, is only brought about
by establishing the correct connection between the affect and the intel-
lect. They stress the importance of realising the fundamental value of
the transference in therapy, and they add that “too much knowledge on
the part of the patient should be replaced by more knowledge on the part of the
analyst” (ibid., p. 61, italics in original). That is to say that the analyst
should set aside his knowledge, should make room for the libido in
the analytic situation, and should tell the patient only what the latter
“absolutely requires for the analytic experience, and its understanding”
(ibid.). This additional knowledge includes the fact that the analyst
knows that he knows nothing—he does not know how the analy-
sand coped with his traumatic experiences. This seems to point in the
same direction as Lacan’s “sujet supposé savoir” (the subject who is
presumed to know). Laplanche calls this the “transfert en creux”, the
“hollowed-out” or “empty” transference, in which there is nothing to
interpret (Laplanche, 1987, pp. 156–158). This hollowed-out transference
represents the space in which interpretations of all kinds are possible.
This also means that, when this space is missing, transference interpre-
tations must fall on infertile ground. There will always remain a resi-
due in this room, a residue which is not understood by either side, and
which therefore cannot be interpreted. What can we say about Freud’s
technique of dealing with transference in these notes? It is well known
that Freud explained transference in a reductive way, tracing it back to
infantile sexuality or the infantile affect, which would then be repeated
in the analytic situation. He paid relatively little attention to the analytic

situation itself, that is, to what actually happened between himself and
the analysand (Cremerius, 1984, p. 342). This is also described in Blum’s
diary: “Detaching myself from Freud never posed any difficulties, since
during the whole analysis Freud never ‘offered’ himself as a transfer-
ence object, but as a reliable analytic dialogue partner, who allowed for
open equality with him” (Pohlen, 2006, p. 283). Cremerius remarks that
Freud did not follow up certain transferential offers, as in the case of
the “Rat Man”, who had told him at the beginning of the hour that he
was hungry (Cremerius, 1984, p. 343). By and large, this is also the way
in which he worked in the analysis of my grandmother. There is one
passage in the notes, however, where Freud—in a rather surly manner,
perhaps—interprets the psychoanalytic situation: “When you belittle
yourself you do it to spoil your love for me, just like the lady with the
haemorrhoids.”
Nevertheless, one can state that Freud did offer himself as a transfer-
ence object in the case of my grandmother, too. Roazen quotes Freud’s
analysand Hirst as saying “that the mere fact that he was talking to
Freud had more of a therapeutic effect than anything that Freud had
said to him” (Roazen, 1995, pp. 27–28). My mother remembers a remark
of my grandmother that it was Freud’s presence, his being in the same
room, above all, that had been effective; words were only of secondary
importance.
He was suggestive and seductive, and partly also very active, but
at the same time he kept his distance in the analysis, as he did in most
cases.13 Thus he was able, without actually dealing with the present
transference situation, to create a transferential space—the “hollowed-
out transference”, in Laplanche’s term—in which he could interpret,
in a reductive way, the sexual-infantile transference—in the “filled-in
transference”, “le transfert en plein”, as Laplanche calls it.
To conclude, I would like to quote from a hitherto unpublished
letter of Freud’s to Pfister, in which he mentions the end of my grand-
mother’s analysis.14 It was written in Badgastein on 29 July 1921, two
weeks after the analysis had ended: “The little G. became totally
transparent, and she is actually finished—but what life will now
do to her I cannot know.“ Engrossed in my wishful thinking I pro-
duced a veritable parapraxis, and proudly said to myself: My grand-
mother understood what it was all about! She saw through it all! But
then Ulrike May pointed out to me that Freud often made similar
statements in his correspondence, and that this meant no more than
Freud himself understood—or thought he understood—what it was
all about, but that he could not tell if she herself had understood “it”.
So, what did life do to her? Upon her return from Vienna, she packed
her bags in Zurich, called off the wedding, which had been planned
for September, and immediately took off for Paris to join her brother.
There she took up a position in a psychiatric clinic, and soon fell
in love with my grandfather—the sculptor from Brienz—who hap-
pened to be in Paris at the same time. They married in 1923, had
four children, lived in Paris until the outbreak of war in 1939, and
then moved on to Zurich. They stayed together for 60 years until her
death.
There is one question I have not been able to answer to the present
day. Why did she not become an analyst herself?
Notes
1. The fee of 40 Swiss francs was, in April 1921, equivalent to £1.15 or
US$ 6.90 (Ed.).
2. Translator’s note: in the original, “Mit kollegialen Grüßen”, a common
salutation among doctors at the time. As with so many other saluta-
tions, there is no exact equivalent in English. I have chosen to translate
it literally for two reasons: first, this formula was extremely rarely used
by Freud in his later years; second, I find it noteworthy that he did use
it in his letter to this young female doctor, who had just completed her
training.
3. She took up her first post there after the Staatsexamen (final examination)
in 1918. In 1920, she also wrote her medical dissertation under Bleuler
at the Burghölzli.
4. Translator’s note: untranslatable play on the word “Freud(e)” = joy,
pleasure.
5. Two monthly money transfers are extant.
6. Translator’s note: in the original: “Sonntagsstunde”—obviously a mis-
take for “Montagskruste” = Monday crust. “Even short interruptions
have a slightly obscuring effect on the work. We used to speak jokingly
of the ‘Monday crust’ when we began work again after the rest on
Sunday” (Freud, 1913c, p. 127).
7. Translator’s note: the equivalent of grammar or high school.
8. Translator’s note: “P.” in the original.
9. Translator’s note: in the original this sentence is written in Swiss

German; the Hungerueli Isegrind is a fairy-tale figure.
10. See introduction.
12. In this context, I cannot enter into a discussion of this book’s role in the
history of the “Secret Committee”, to the eventual dissolution of which
it contributed.
13. An exception is the analysis of Wortis (1954), who could not wait until
the analysis ended.
14. My thanks go to Ernst Falzeder who made this letter (Freud Collection,
Library of Congress) available to me.
References
Blanton, S. (1971). Diary of My Analysis with Sigmund Freud. New York:
Hawthorn.
Cremerius, J. (1984). Freud bei der Arbeit über die Schulter geschaut—
Seine Technik im Spiegel von Schülern und Patienten. In: Vom Handwerk
des Psychoanalytikers: Das Werkzeug der psychoanalytischen Technik
(pp. 326–363). Stuttgart: frommann-holzboog.
Doolittle, H. (1956). Tribute to Freud. New York: Norman Holmes Pearson.
Dorsey, J. M. (1976). An American Psychiatrist in Vienna, 1935–1937, and his
Sigmund Freud. Detroit, MI: Center for Health Education.
Ferenczi, S., & Rank, O. (1924). The Development of Psychoanalysis. New York:
Dover, 1956.
Freud, S. (1901a). On Dreams. S. E., 5: 633–686. London: Hogarth.
Freud, S. (1905d). Three Essays on the Theory of Sexuality. S. E., 7: 130–243.
London: Hogarth.
Freud, S. (1913c). On Beginning the Treatment: (Further Recommendations
on the Technique of Psycho-Analysis I). S. E., 12: 123. London: Hogarth.
Freud, S. (1914g). Remembering, Repeating and Working-Through: (Fur-
ther Recommendations on the Technique of Psycho-Analysis, II). S. E.,
12: 147–156. London: Hogarth.
Freud, S. (1920g). Beyond the Pleasure Principle. S. E., 18: 7–64. London:
Hogarth.
Freud, S. (1937d). Constructions in analysis. S. E., 23: 257–269. London:
Hogarth.
Freud, S., & Freud, A. (2006). Briefwechsel 1904–1938. Frankfurt: Fischer.
Freud, S., & Pfister, O. (1963). Psychoanalysis and Faith. The Letters of
Sigmund Freud and Oskar Pfister. New York: Basic.
Jones, E. (1957). The Life and Work of Sigmund Freud, Vol. 3. New York: Basic.
Kardiner, A. (1977). My Analysis with Freud: Reminiscences. New York:

Norton.
Laplanche, J. (1987). Nouveaux fondements pour la psychanalyse. Paris: Presses
Universitaires de France. D. Macey (Trans.) New Foundations for Psycho-
analysis. Oxford: Blackwell, 1989.
Laplanche, J. (1999). La psychanalyse comme anti-herméneutique [1995],
in Entre séduction et inspiration: L’homme. Paris: Presses Universitaires
de France. Psychoanalysis as anti-hermeneutics. Radical Philosophy, 79:
7–22, 1996.
May, U. (2006). Freuds Patientenkalender: Siebzehn Analytiker in Analyse
bei Freud (1910–1920). Luzifer Amor: Zeitschrift zur Geschichte der Psycho-
analyse, 14(37): 43–97.
May, U. (2007). Neunzehn Patienten in Analyse bei Freud (1910–1920): Zur
Dauer von Freuds Analysen (Teil I) Zur Frequenz von Freuds Analysen
und weiteren Beobachtungen (Teil II). Psyche: Zeitschrift für Psychoanalyse
und ihre Anwendungen 61: 590–625, 686–709.
Pohlen, M. (2006). Freuds Analyse: Die Sitzungsprotokolle Ernst Blums.
Reinbek bei Hamburg: Rowohlt.
Roazen, P. (1995). How Freud Worked. Northvale, NJ: Aronson.
Tögel, C. (2006). Sigmund Freuds Praxis.Visiten und Ordination—
Psychoanalysen—Einnahmen. Psyche: Zeitschrift für Psychoanalyse und
ihre Anwendungen, 60: 860–880.
Turnheim, M. (1996). Nachwort. In: S. Ferenczi & O. Rank, Entwicklungsziele
der Psychoanalyse: Zur Wechselbeziehung von Theorie und Praxis (pp. 85–95).
Vienna: Turia + Kant.
Wortis, J. (1954). Fragments of an Analysis with Freud. New York: Simon &
Schuster.
CHAPT ER F OUR
“Prof. Freud calls for tolerance!”—

Dashes that moved the couch and
politics*
Karl Fallend
T
he advancement of psychoanalysis virtually came to a halt
during the First World War. Many analysts were drafted, or
unavailable because they resided in what now counted as enemy
territory. Severe material dearth impeded intellectual exchange and
academically productive work. Toward the end of the war, however,
psychoanalysis seemed to have established itself in society to a sur-
prising degree: after all, its methods had proven more effective in the
treatment of war neuroses than those of classical psychiatry. As a con-
sequence, military administrations in Germany, Hungary, and Austria
“seriously considered opening their own psychoanalytic wards within
their armies, a project that was interrupted only by the eventual end of
the war … In any case, the experiences during wartime promoted the
dissemination of an interest in psychoanalysis throughout the world.”1
While psychoanalysts were spared engagement under the patronage of
the military, the newly acquired worldwide interest changed the future
* Time and again, and this time in particular, I would like to thank my partner Gabriella
Hauch for her feminist critique and her support.
71
of psychoanalysis. The former small circle of quirky scientists grew into

an international movement.
In the year 1921 alone, interested parties inquired about psycho-
analysis from South Africa, Australia, Bulgaria, Brazil, and India. By
1922, the meetings of the Vienna Psychoanalytic Society drew so many
foreign visitors that on 13 June, its members had to vote on a revised
guest policy. This post-war development of psychoanalysis became
the most rapid in its history. Anton von Freund, a wealthy Hungarian
industrialist, donated part of his estate to the psychoanalytic move-
ment, which allowed Freud to make his pet project, the foundation of
a psychoanalytic press, a reality in 1921. The Viennese communal elec-
tions of 4 May 1919, in which the Social Democrats won an absolute
majority, marked the beginning of Austromarxismus, the socio-political
project that gained international recognition especially for its impres-
sive “Red Vienna” social housing projects. Social Democrat councillor
Julius Tandler launched a comprehensive reform of public health and
welfare services, which resulted in the establishment of marriage guid-
ance bureaus, school dental clinics, welfare centres for alcoholics, clinics
for sufferers of venereal diseases, and so on in Vienna. By 1920, the city’s
psychoanalysts joined in the reforms. Following the example of their
Berlin colleagues, they began planning a psychoanalytic outpatient
clinic, to open in 1922. A new professional profile of the “psychoana-
lyst” emerged. Questions of training were posed with a new urgency:
who was allowed to call themselves a psychoanalyst? What should be
the criteria when choosing new members? Possible steps to institution-
alisation were discussed intensively, for instance at the International
Psychoanalytic Congress in Den Haag in 1920. The triad of interna-
tionalisation, institutionalisation, and professionalisation marked the
psychoanalysts’ hungry dedication after the barren war years. Their
commitment seemed to defiantly counter the highly volatile social, eco-
nomic, and political conditions they were working in, which were, after
all, dominated by a fear of chaos and anarchy.
When Anna Guggenbühl arrived in Vienna in March 1921, she could
probably guess from her own experience in Zurich what awaited her
in the metropolis of the fallen Habsburg monarchy. In November 1917,
infuriated mass demonstrations in Zurich had demanded the release
of the incarcerated pacifist Max Dätwyler. The protest was violently
crushed by the police, which resulted in several fatalities on the protes-
tors’ side (see Teslin, 1919, pp. 1–26). Though neutral during the war,
" P R O F. F R E U D CA L L S F O R TO L E R A N C E ! " 73
Switzerland nevertheless had to alleviate hunger and deal with food

shortages in public soup kitchens. As a result of the growing frustra-
tion, Zurich residents had joined the national strikes of October 1918
and November 1919, which were quelled by the army after a few days.
In 1919, the Social Democrats had become the second strongest party
in the Swiss national council. Anna Guggenbühl had witnessed the
masses on the streets. What she had seen were revolutionary offshoots
spreading from Russia throughout Europe. In Austria, now merely a
federal state, these offshoots met with a particularly strong empathic
response.
The successful Russian revolution of 1917 had inspired insurrections
in Munich, Bremen, and Berlin. The Spartacist uprising was brutally
put down, its leaders Karl Liebknecht and Rosa Luxemburg arrested
and executed. In Budapest, revolutionaries led by Béla Kun created the
Party of Communists from Hungary and installed a short-lived gov-
ernment run by socialists and communists. The Habsburg monarchy
lay in ruins. After exercising power for more than six decades, Franz
Josef, once a symbol of fatherly stability, was history, leaving a palpable
vacancy.
In many aspects, the almost bankrupt Austria resembled what we
might today call a developing country. Hunger, tuberculosis, and other
epidemics raged. Many homes could not be heated for lack of coal.
Compared to 1914, the expense of living had multiplied by 150, while
incomes had only grown by a factor of forty. The central bank could
hardly issue enough notes, and the formerly powerful Vienna bour-
geoisie was forced to sell jewellery and paintings in order to survive
(Pfoser, Pfoser-Schewig, & Renner, 1993, p. 82ff). Sigmund Freud, too,
had lost his savings. Only by treating foreign patients could he support
himself and start saving again. In particular, income from American col-
leagues like Horace Frink and Monroe Meyer significantly contributed
to the fact that Freud—as Otto Rank puts it in a letter to the committee
on 1 March 1921—“had at least won back a third of his pre-war estate”
by the early 1920s.2
After The Last Days of Mankind (the title of Karl Kraus’s 1919 epic,
satirical play about the First World War), the masses who had lost the
war suffered from poverty, starvation, and the insecurity of what power
would take the place vacated by the monarchy, which had, after all,
ruled for centuries. Not many thought that the small Austrian state
would be able to survive. In referendums in the Tyrol (April 1921) and
Salzburg (May 1921),3 more than ninety per cent voted to annex Austria
into Germany.
Which World? asked Hauch (2008). In the years after the First World
War, that was the central question the population set out to answer by
mass strikes, mass demonstrations, and mass movements—social phe-
nomena whose momentum, frequency, and aggression not only caused
excitement and hope but also, for many, upset and anxiety, and which
Freud and his followers reflected in their psychoanalytical methods.
Right after the war, at the peak of the social revolutionary phase,
Paul Federn was first to enter the public arena with a psychological
analysis of the Räte—the workers’ councils. His analysis, published
in Österreichischer Volkswirt in March 1919, was titled “Towards a psy-
chology of the revolution. The fatherless society”. To Federn, father–
child relations constituted the affective basis for every authoritative
relationship, which he saw reflected in an overly visible manner in the
political organisations of his day. The yearning for fatherly security,
power, might, and protection affects the choice of father figures after
the fall of the actual father. Federn located the potential for change in
the new organisational form of the Räte, which had risen and received
its impulses from the grassroots, and whose unconscious psychologi-
cal system constituted a fraternal relationship. The actual psychological
problem in Federn’s view was the formation of a non-patriarchal social
order (1919, p. 76). Still, Federn was aware of the tenacious effects his-
tory can have. He expressed this awareness with the simple observation
of an older comrade who, while fluently and confidently rallying for the
most radical beliefs, stumbled more than twenty times over the few sen-
tences that demanded the emperor’s abdication. “Within him, the child
who is loyal to the Emperor has left the social democratic man—as the
popular saying goes—speechless”4 (ibid., p. 72). Paul Federn, himself
an active social democrat, considered the Social Democrats chastened,
as its founder Victor Adler provided the sort of leader to whom party
members could satisfyingly direct their ideational need for a father
figure. Adler’s son Fritz was seen by the party as a heroic figure, and
his assassination of Prime Minister Count Stürgkh was viewed as an act
of vehement opposition against the old authoritarian state (ibid., p. 75).
As Federn’s analysis of the revolution was published, Freud him-
self seemed to have already entertained thoughts of subjecting the
psychological phenomenon of the ideological group to an analytical
investigation. On 12 May 1919, he wrote to his friend Sándor Ferenczi
that he had just “attempted a psychoanalytical foundation for group

psychology with a very simple idea” (Jones, 1962, p. 59). Though often
interrupted—after all, Freud was engaged with Beyond the Pleasure Prin-
ciple at the same time—the work on this idea would eventually grow
into a book, Group Psychology and the Analysis of the Ego (1921c). This
book was finally published in August 1921,5 which means that Freud
was working on it during Anna Guggenbühl’s analysis. Freud opens
his explication with a radical critique of a binary conception of the indi-
vidual and the group: “The contrast between individual psychology
and social or group psychology, which at a first glance seems to be full
of significance, loses a great deal of its sharpness when it is examined
more closely … [s]o from the very first individual psychology … is at the
same time social psychology as well” (Freud, 1921c, p. 3). He elaborates
that erotic relations, in the form of zielgehemmte (aim-inhibited) libido,
connect the members of a group horizontally, but also vertically. By
using the example of two “artificial groups”, the church and the army,6
Freud analyses the psychodynamics of a “suggestion of an illusion”,
that is, the idea that a leader loves everybody equally and justly. On
the one hand, each individual is libidinally bound to the leader—Christ
or the General—and on the other hand, to the other individuals in the
group. According to Freud, the impending disintegration of this erotic
relation results in “social anxiety”, an aimless fear and panic that analo-
gously manifests in the individual’s neurotic anxiety at the breakup of
emotional attachments. This fear necessitates defences, which in turn
contribute to a strengthening of the bond, and cause the individual to
direct their hostile impulses to the outside: “Therefore a religion, even if
it calls itself a religion of love, must be hard and unloving to those who
do not belong to it” (ibid., p. 36). Here, Freud emerges as a fundamen-
tal critic of religion, which, given the Stalinist development of Russia,
bears political–prophetic potential, as he continues:
Fundamentally indeed every religion is in this same way a reli-

gion of love for all those whom it embraces, while cruelty and
intolerance towards those who do not belong to it are natural to
every religion … If today that intolerance no longer shows itself so
violent and cruel as in former centuries, we can scarcely conclude
that there has been a softening in human manners. The cause is
rather to be found in the undeniable weakening of religious feel-
ings and the libidinal ties that depend upon them. If another
group tie takes the place of the religious one—and the socialist tie
seems to be succeeding in doing so—then there will be the same
intolerance towards outsiders as in the age of the Wars of Religion.
(ibid., p. 36)
Freud’s reflections on “group psychology” were timely, as he focused

on psychogenic phenomena and processes that he could observe in
great numbers in the contemporary changes manifesting in everyday
political life. The growth of political parties into mass organisations and
the public display of so many different ideologically motivated groups,
across national borders and to such great extent, were new social phe-
nomena. Freud, like most of his colleagues, had already passed his
prime, his ideas firmly a part of The World of Yesterday (Zweig, 1944). The
appearance of young students—especially young female students—in
the Vienna Psychoanalytic Society’s regular discussion panels did not
only signify a generational break, but also the advent of new ideas
that would radically alter the world. These ideas were formulated by
voices that had been denied the right to be heard for centuries: those
of young people and of women. The analogies in the suppression of
these two groups had already been detected in 1914 (cf., Fallend, 1992),
with Siegfried Bernfeld, leader of the radical Vienna Youth Movement
and future psychoanalyst, remarking in a brochure that “the ideas of
the new youth and those of the modern women correspond to and
necessitate each other” (Bernfeld, 1914, p. 37). This new, predominately
urban avant-garde postulated the ideals of freedom, emancipation,
and autonomy in all spheres of life, and measured the new democratic
republic against their demands. Freud and his colleagues were con-
fronted with the same claims and ideals. On 2 June 1920, barely a year
before Anna Guggenbühl began her analysis with Freud, Otto Fenichel,
a medical student and cohort of Bernfeld, addressed the Vienna Psycho-
analytic Society with a talk titled “Sexual questions in the youth move-
ment”. In the following discussion, Freud appeared slightly perplexed
and not entirely sympathetic, but nevertheless reacted with openness
and tolerance. “Prof. Freud feels quite removed from the problems of
these times. Thinks that in the present order of society not to help.7
Abstinence, but under protest! Calls for tolerance!” And the minutes
continue: “Effects of ascesis of the youth: creates vigorous men, effects
show as deformity of character, not as neuroses, e.g. Switzerland. Is the
consequence of strong restriction of the sexual” (Fallend, 1995, p. 200f).
These stereotypical remarks are hard to pin down. However, they may
have resulted from Freud’s experience of a repressive “civilised sexual
morality” that shortly afterwards he would also encounter in exchanges
with his Swiss psychoanalyst colleagues.
Georg Groddeck, the physician, social reformer, and writer from
Baden-Baden, was one of the “misfits, dreamers, sensitives” (A. Freud,
1968, p. 2,489) among psychoanalysts to whom Freud felt most
empathically inclined. With his psychoanalytic novel The Seeker of Souls,
Groddeck caused a veritable stir. The novel was published in early 1921
by the Internationaler Psychoanalytischer Verlag, and met Freud’s sen-
sibilities spot on in passages like the following, in which the author has
his protagonist Thomas Weltlein exclaim: “Behold, how great the earth
is and how small the little things that strike you as so important; look
around you, the small pleasures that sexuality shall bring, you shall find
them everywhere. The world is awash with them.” The prudery of his
colleagues, who were enraged about the book lest it should damage the
image of the psychoanalytic profession, amused Freud. On 23 January
1921, Freud wrote to Max Eitingon: “I am quite entertained by the col-
lective frowns that Groddeck’s novel arouses in analysts even within
our close circle. With the hypocrite Swiss or the anagoge8 Silberer there
I don’t wonder, but otherwise I cannot but observe that it is a treat,
caviar for the masses, of course, but nevertheless the work of a mind
equal to that of Rabelais.”9
Such praise was not trivial—neither were the reasons that quickly
transformed Freud’s initial amusement into irritation. After a protest
meeting held by the Swiss Psycho-Analytical Society, the Psychoana-
lytic Press in Vienna received a harsh letter, hitherto unmatched in
the history of psychoanalysis. For the first time, a local chapter, eager
to show compliance before there was even a charge, spoke out in
favour of censoring a psychoanalytic publication, and demanded that
the publisher prohibit distribution of Groddeck’s The Seeker of Souls.
This went too far. On 28 February 1921, Freud and Otto Rank pre-
pared on behalf of the executive board of the Psychoanalytic Press, an
unambiguous ten-page statement that did not invite further debate.
Among other things, the document clearly stated that Freud and Rank
would sincerely regret having “to conclude that our Swiss colleagues
accepted our psychoanalysis only to arrange, in solemn silence,
a first-class funeral of its sexual content, and we hope that this is not
the case.”10
What was at stake in this debate was not ethical issues, or matters
of literary taste. The Swiss colleagues had shaken the very founda-
tions of psychoanalysis. It seems not unreasonable to assume that Anna
Guggenbühl—Freud’s famous name notwithstanding—also went to
Vienna because she could expect to meet with more tolerance, under-
standing, and openness for her particular problems there.
She was drawn to the great social movements raised by the work-
ers and the youth, and especially to the international women’s move-
ment,11 for which an entirely new era had dawned after the First
World War. The effects were especially palpable in “Red Vienna”,
where the Social Democrats held the absolute majority of votes. The
foundation of the republic had granted women the status of citizens,
a first in Austrian history. Women were given active and passive suf-
frage,12 and the right to assemble in political organisations. These
rights did not just exist on paper, but were exercised vigorously. The
young republic’s first national election for the constitutive National
Assembly saw more than eighty-two per cent of all women eligible
to vote make use of their newly won right. During the first legislative
period, from 1920 to 1923, twelve delegates to the National Council
were female—a number that would not be reached again until 1978
(Hauch, 1995, p. 92ff).
The social and political equality of women served as a basic claim
of the new democracy. However, there was more at stake: the recogni-
tion of a woman as a person in her own right, and the appreciation
of her right to autonomy. The Victorian image of women, forged over
centuries and until only a few years earlier the model for middle and
upper class women without exception, now belonged to Zweig’s World
of Yesterday:
In the pre-Freudian era therefore, the axiom was agreed upon that
a female person could have no physical desires as long as they had
not been awakened by man and that, obviously, was officially per-
mitted only in marriage. But even in those moral times, in Vienna
in particular, the air was full of dangerous erotic infection, and a
girl of good family had to live in a completely sterile atmosphere,
from the day of her birth until the day when she left the altar on her
husband’s arm. In order to protect young girls, they were not left
alone for one moment. (Zweig, 1944, p. 79)
Sigmund Freud was not the only contributor to a correction of this

image, as Anna Guggenbühl highlights in her first diary entry, an espe-
cially striking passage: “I want to go to Russia, like those sons and
daughters of the aristocracy left their families at the last revolution,
I want to take off and leave this milieu in which I do not belong. I think
of this play by Schnitzler, The Sounding of the Flute [1911]. Sigmund
Freud: This, exactly, is your very conflict.”
The allure of the Russian Revolution—the yearning for dissolution
of class barriers and generational conflicts—remained unbroken in
the year 1921, especially for young people. The latest developments,
like the Kronstadt rebellion of February 1921, during which the muti-
nying sailors arrested the officials of the Soviet administration and
seized power over the city, could be read about,13 but were still dif-
ficult to make sense of. In addition, it does not come as a surprise
that in her analysis with Freud, Anna Guggenbühl only ever men-
tions one of Freud’s contemporaries by name, at least according to her
diary: Arthur Schnitzler, an author she read with great passion.14 His
“Doppelgänger” and “profound psychological researcher”, as Freud
would address the poet, author, and physician Schnitzler, a year later
on his birthday on 14 May 1922, “anticipate[d] [everything] by refined
introspection, what he [Freud] uncovered only by laborious investi-
gation into other persons” (Jones, 1962, p. 514). “Your determinism,”
Freud writes to Schnitzler, “as well as your scepticism—what people
call pessimism—your preoccupation with the truth of the unconscious
and of the instinctual drives in man, your dissection of the cultural
conventions of our society, the dwelling of your thoughts on the pola-
rity of love and death, all this moves me with an uncanny feeling of
familiarity” (E. Freud, 1961, p. 345).
The two men shared a critique of bourgeois sexual morals as well as
a profound critique of the institution of matrimony, which Freud had
already expressed in 1908: “Marital unfaithfulness would … be a much
more probable cure for the neurosis resulting from marriage” (Freud,
1908d, p. 23). In vocally expressing such positions, it is likely that both
men really struck a chord with Anna Guggenbühl. Arthur Schnitzler
was one of the most successful playwrights of the German-speaking
world, who at the time had just caused a sensation with La Ronde. Every-
body was speaking of the scandal, the newspapers featured extended
coverage, and the affair was even treated as the cause of a political
crisis. Perhaps it was these stirrings that influenced Guggenbühl when

writing her diary, as the work she refers to is neither The Sounding of
the Flute nor is it a play. It is rather a novella titled The Shepherd’s Pipe
(Schnitzler, 1911).15
What Anna Guggenbühl remembered was thus not the “typical
novelistic object-symbol” (Fliedl, 2005, p. 162) but the sweet sound of
seduction: “maybe this sound of the flute is the one single lure that you
are ready to succumb to, or maybe it is only one of a few or of many”
(Schnitzler, 1911, p. 236).16 In the novella, the aged Erasmus, in a spirit
of overly rational liberalism, sets his young wife Dionysia free, and
suggests she should give in to seduction: “This is the sounding of the
shepherd’s flute. And behold, without willing to confess to it, yes even
without fully realising, you, who in this instant were still ready to go to
your death, are moved to a longing to know which pair of lips is caress-
ing the flute whose call is resounding” (ibid.). Dionysia lives through
Anna Guggenbühl’s “Leporello’s aria”—as Freud calls his analysand’s
fantasies about the men she would like to have relations with—in a
“revue of female figures of different social and moral standing, ranging
from wife to shepherd’s playmate, industrialist’s companion, worker’s
harlot, and lover of a count to mistress of a prince” (Fliedl, 2005, p. 163),
none of which would allow her to find her happiness. It is also for this
reason that Dionysia finally leaves her husband, as she is disgusted
“by the stony mask of his wisdom” (Schnitzler, 1911, p. 261), that is,
by his mock understanding for her erotic needs, which only objectifies
her once more without taking her seriously as an autonomous person
(cf., Fliedl, 2005, p. 164). The young Swiss woman felt encouraged by
Schnitzler’s writing and Freud’s thinking to undertake a similar step.
While Dionysia’s journey of experience is still set in a “fairy-tale
realm of dreams”17 (Fliedl), Schnitzler’s La Ronde (original German
name, Reigen), a tragicomedy in ten acts, introduced an open, mirror-
like criticism of the hypocritical “civilised sexual morality” with a bit-
ing realism. The play shook the already slowly decaying foundations
of this morality, and caused one of the greatest scandals in the history
of theatre. Arthur Schnitzler had finished La Ronde in 1897 but deemed
the play unfit for public performance; he self-published a first edition of
200 copies in 1900 at his own expense. The subsequent publication as a
book in 1903 garnered great attention, and culminated in the release of
ten additional editions in eight months, which amounted to 14,000 cop-
ies sold. Still, the author allowed its theatrical performance only after
the war. The premiere took place on 23 December 1920, at the Kleines
Schauspielhaus in Berlin. In Vienna, the play opened on 1 February
1921 at the Kammerspiele.
Ten dialogues between a man and a woman, each divided into a
“before” and an “after”, the climax of each centrally marked by what
amounts to perhaps the most fatal dashes in the history of literature.
Given as “— — — — — ” in the manuscript18 (Schnitzler, 1903, p. 10ff),
they were rendered as lights out or a fall of the curtain on stage, and thus
let the sexual act manifest as a silent, yet lively image in the audience’s
fantasy. With the sexual encounters of different social classes—between
harlot-soldier, soldier-parlour maid, parlour maid-young gentleman,
young gentleman-young wife, young wife-husband, husband-Süßes
Mädel,19 Süßes Mädel-poet, poet-actress, actress-count, count-harlot—
Schnitzler stages the circle of La Ronde as closed. In the middle, though
not at the centre of the play, stands the bourgeois conjugal bed, which
gives insight into the factitiousness of the dominant sexual morality:
“The Husband: I’ve only loved one woman: you. A man can only love
where he finds purity and truth” (Schnitzler, 1903, p. 52).20
The Berlin premiere already foreshadowed what should finally esca-
late in Vienna. The performance was met with vocal protest against
“the licentious concoction of the Jew from Vienna”,21 which even led
to litigation (see Pfoser, Pfoser-Schewig, & Renner, 1993). The lifting of
a temporary injunction in Berlin on 6 January 1921 could not quell the
protests. They were only the harbingers of the Viennese scandal, and as
such also the precursors to the future political catastrophe. In Berlin, it
was the Verband nationalgesinnter Soldaten (Union of Nationally-Minded
Soldiers) and the Antisemitischer Schutz- und Trutzbund, (Antisemitic
League for Protection and Defence), who sabotaged La Ronde. During
the arrests, the protesters were singing “Deutschland über alles”, and
chanted slogans like “Down with the Jews!”22
In Vienna, the national-conservative and the völkisch (populist) press
had stirred up anti-Semitic sentiments against the author and the play
by using terms like “pornographer” or “Jewish swine-litterateur”. The
Christian Social Party member of parliament, and later federal chancel-
lor, prelate Ignaz Seipel, classified the atmosphere according to party
politics, when he remarked at an assembly of Catholics “that the Social
Democrats have to appear and stage tempestuous scenes, as long as it
serves the defence of some Jewish machinations.”23 Right afterwards,
Schnitzler relates in his diary that over 300 demonstrators marched to
the Kammerspiele, “insulted the theatregoers, who were just arriving,

and yelled: ‘They violate our women! Down with La Ronde! Down with
the Social Democrats’” (Schnitzler, 2006, p. 43).24 After further demon-
strations and attempted disruptions of the play, the performance of
16 February 1921 had to be interrupted and cancelled, an event that—
at least from the viewpoint of the Neue Freie Presse—“could have been
forecast with mathematical certitude.”25 The incidents were unique:
noticeable agitation emerged “already during the first dialogues, as a
sharp, pungent stench, which could be discerned as caused by stink
bombs, gradually announced itself”. During the performance, demon-
strators entered the building, which resulted in:
physical assaults on many patrons, on men and women, who were

beaten and pulled by their hair … suddenly a jet of water poured
over the auditorium, after a demonstrator had opened the fire
hydrant that was closest to the stage … the guards were attacked
with sticks and clubs … men who wanted to protect their women
against the intimidation were beaten up, many of them were
injured by blows from batons and brass knuckles, female patrons
were pulled to the ground and dragged over it by their hair.26
While demonstrations, protests, and scenes of turmoil later also took

place in Munich, Hamburg, Frankfurt, Hannover, Eisenach, Mährisch-
Ostrau, Prague, and so on, they were nowhere as violent and serious as
in Vienna. After all subsequent performances of La Ronde were officially
banned by the police, the conflict about the play grew into a cultural
struggle between “Red Vienna” and the federal government, which
was dominated by the Christian Social Party. The debate soon turned
into a matter of grave national importance, and indicated a crisis in the
young constitution. Passionate scenes became the order of the day in
the Austrian National Assembly and the Landtag of Vienna. The con-
flicts of competence surrounding the ban of the public performance
of La Ronde, which unfolded between the “black” ministry of internal
affairs and the “red” municipality of Vienna, were an early and most
visible demonstration of the dynamics of tension that would exacerbate
dramatically from July 1927 onwards, and finally split the country in
the civil war of February 1934.27
The first six months of 1921, during which Anna Guggenbühl lived
in Vienna, was a culturally, socially, and politically exciting period. In
the European metropolis of two million inhabitants, Guggenbühl not

only witnessed the fall of the monarchy and its old order that had lasted
for centuries, but also the struggle of the nascent workers’, youth and
women’s movement, which pointed to the future. She was confronted
with poverty, hunger (Coriat, 1921), and a severe shortage of housing,
but also encountered the first social experiments of the Austro-Marxist
municipality. She experienced an open, everyday anti-Semitism and
the clash of two politically organised ideologies, which continuously
threatened to make the latent tendencies towards a civil war very real.
The focus of her personal experience most probably lay in witness-
ing the effect of two men who, each in their own way, brought forward
the correlation of a hypocritical “civilised sexual morality and modern
nervous illness”, and whose critique opened up an expanded range of
opportunities in terms of taking charge of one’s own life—especially
for women.
Notes
1. Korrespondenzblatt der Internationalen Psychoanalytischen Vereini-
gung. Sitzungsbericht. In: Internationale Zeitschrift für Psychoanalyse
(1920): 382.
2. Rank, O. (1921). Letter to the Committee, March 1. Otto Rank Collection,
Columbia University, New York, New York. The hard currency that
Anna Guggenbühl would have paid for her treatment was certainly
one of the reasons why Freud accepted her for analysis. To me, another
significant factor appears to be the fact that in his close contact with the
young doctor, Freud hoped to access thoughts and experiences similar
to those of his beloved daughter Sophie, who was born in the same
year as Anna Guggenbühl, and had died at the age of 26 on 26 January
1920.
3. See Arbeiter-Zeitung of 25 April 1921 (“The Tyrolean referendum for
annexation. Tremendous participation—nearly 99% for Germany”) and
of 30 May 1921 (“The Salzburg referendum. Nearly unanimous ‘Yes’”).
4. Translator’s note: the German saying “jemandem die Rede verschla-
gen”—literally, to “beat the speech away from someone”, has an
implicitly violent feel that is lost in the English phrase, which only
“leaves” someone speechless.
5. A general interest for the group as a psychological phenomenon also
became apparent in the wide distribution of Freud’s work. Only three
years after its initial publication, a second edition of 6,000–10,000 was
printed. In 1922, the English translation was introduced to the market.
In 1923, a Russian translation was announced as being “prepared for

the press”. Apparently, this edition could no longer be published, as
the Stalin regime had gradually yet firmly receded from psychoanaly-
sis, a school of thought that Leo Trotsky had cherished. In 1924, came
French, Spanish, and Dutch translations, followed in 1929 by a Japanese
translation.
6. As Mario Erdheim has pointed out (1982), Freud’s “group psychology”
is predominantly a “psychology of institutions”, and should also be
read as a radical critique of institutional formations. While the more
modern, and more recently relevant example of the political parties is
not yet directly addressed in Freud’s critical discussion of the church
and the army, they should nevertheless be kept in mind continuously.
7. Translator’s note: to preserve the peculiarities of this special source,
I have adopted the jumbled grammar of the original German protocol.
8. Translator’s note: anagogic means another way of dream interpretation
compared to the psychoanalytic method.
9. Freud–Eitingon letters, Freud Museum London. Translated by KPH.
10. Sigmund Freud Papers, Sigmund Freud Collection, Manuscript Divi-
sion. Library of Congress. Washington DC. Translated by KPH.
11. Throughout her life, Anna Guggenbühl identified with the move-
ment for the emancipation of women and, in the late 1920s, authored
a number of feminist papers (personal correspondence with Anna
Koellreuter).
12. In Switzerland, national suffrage for women was only established in
1971.
13. “The mutiny of the Kronstadt sailors”. Neue Freie Presse, 14 February
1921, p. 1.
14. Personal correspondence with Anna Koellreuter.
15. I thank Konstanze Fliedl for her significant advice.
16. Translator’s note: translation of all quotations in this paragraph by
KPH.
17. Translator’s note: translation of Fliedl by KPH.
18. The dashes were also subject of contemporary censorship reports:
“Namely those scenes that are marked with dashes in the manuscript,
have to be contained in such manner, that the spectator is spared the
perception of the sensual instance.” The censorship reports for La
Ronde. Arbeiter-Zeitung, 24 April 1921.
19. Translator’s note: this literary type (literally “sweet missy”) marks a
sexually approachable young woman of the lower classes, often resid-
ing in the Vienna suburbs.
20. Translator’s note: quotation translated by Eric Bentley, see La Ronde
paperback edition, New York: Samuel French, 2011.
21. Translator’s note: translation of Pfoser et al. by KPH.

22. “The La Ronde scandals in Berlin.” Neue Freie Presse, 23 February 1921,
p. 5.
23. “Delegate Professor Dr. Seipl about the ‘La Ronde’ affair.” In: Neue Freie
Presse, 14 February 1921.
24. Translator’s note: quotation translated by KPH.
25. “Disruption of today’s performance of La Ronde. Stink bombs and
violent scuffles in the auditorium—night show called off”. Neue Freie
Presse, 17 February 1921.
26. All quotations in Neue Freie Presse, 17 February 1921, p. 7.
27. After all the scandal, Schnitzler himself banned public performances
of his play; the ban was only lifted by his son Heinrich Schnitzler on
1 January 1982.
References
Bernfeld, S. (1914). Die neue Jugend und die Frauen. Vienna: Kamoenenverlag.
Coriat, I. H. (1921). Sex and hunger. Psychoanalytic Review, 8: 375–381.
Erdheim, M. (1982). Die gesellschaftliche Produktion von Unbewusstheit. Eine
Einführung in den ethnopsychoanalytischen Prozess. Frankfurt: Suhrkamp.
Fallend, K. (1992). Von der Jugendbewegung zur Psychoanalyse. In:
K. Fallend & J. Reichmayr (Eds.), Siegfried Bernfeld oder die Grenzen der
Psychoanalyse (pp. 48–69). Frankfurt: Stroemfeld.
Fallend, K. (1995). Sonderlinge, Träumer, Sensitive: Psychoanalyse auf dem Weg
zur Institution und Profession. Protokolle der Wiener Psychoanalytischen
Vereinigung und biographische Studien. Vienna: Jugend & Volk.
Federn, P. (1919). Zur Psychologie der Revolution: Die vaterlose Gesell-
schaft. In: H. Dahmer (Ed.), Analytische Sozialpsychologie (Volume 1)
(pp. 65–87). Frankfurt: Suhrkamp.
Fliedl, K. (2005). Arthur Schnitzler. Stuttgart: Reclam.
Freud, A. (1968). Schwierigkeiten der Psychoanalyse in Vergangenheit und
Gegenwart. In: Die Schriften der Anna Freud, Bd. IX (pp. 2,481–2,508).
Frankfurt: Fischer, 1987.
Freud, E. (Ed.) (1961). Letters of Sigmund Freud, 1873–1939. T. Stern & J. Stern
(Trans.). New York: Basic.
Freud, S. (1908d). “Civilized” Sexual Morality and Modern Nervous Illness.
S. E., 9: 179. London: Hogarth.
Freud, S. (1921c). Group Psychology and the Analysis of the Ego. S. E., 18:
(pp. 69–143). London: Hogarth.
Groddeck, G. (1921). Der Seelensucher: Ein psychoanalytischer Roman.
Wiesbaden: Limes, 1971.
Hauch, G. (1995). Vom Frauenstandpunkt aus: Frauen im Parlament 1919–1933.

Vienna: Verlag für Gesellschaftskritik.
Hauch, G. (2008). Welche Welt? Welche Politik? Zum Geschlecht in
Revolte, Rätebewegung, Parteien und Parlament. In: H. Konrad. &
W. Maderthaner (Eds.), Das Werden der Republik (pp. 317–338). Vienna:
Carl Gerold’s Sohn.
Jones, E. (1962). Das Leben und Werk von Sigmund Freud. Band III. Die letzte
Phase 1919–1939. Bern: Hans Huber, 1978.
Pfoser, A., Pfoser-Schewig, K., & Renner, G. (Eds.) (1993). Schnitzlers “Rei-
gen”. Analysen und Dokumente. Band 1: der Skandal. Band 2: Die Prozesse.
Frankfurt: Fischer.
Schnitzler, A. (1903). Reigen: Zehn Dialoge. Stuttgart: Reclam, 2007.
Schnitzler, A. (1911). Die Hirtenflöte. Stuttgart: Deutscher Bücherbund, 1975.
Schnitzler, A. (2006). Reigen: Zehn Dialoge. In: Burgtheater Wien, theatre
programme.
Teslin, E. (1919). Massenpsychologie und Selbsterkenntnis. Olten: Verlag.
Zweig, S. (1944). The World of Yesterday. (Reprint edition). A. Bell (Trans.).
Lincoln, NE: University of Nebraska Press, 2013.
CHAPT ER F IVE
Freud the analyst and therapist

Ernst Falzeder
“If our aim continues to be to verbalise the nascent conscious in

terms of the transference, then we are practising analysis; if not,
then we are analysts practising something else that we deem to be
appropriate to the occasion. And why not?”
—Winnicott, 1962, p. 170
“In analysis, one can do anything; one only has to be sure about
what is done, why, and to which ends.”
—Caruso, in Tanco-Duque, 1988, p. 78
F
reud never published a comprehensive work about psycho-
analytical technique. Though he did entertain plans of writing
a “general methodology”, he finally gave them up.1 The smaller
articles that emerged instead (Freud, 1911–1915) did not give hard
“rules” but were rather formulated as “advice”. They were also, as
he would later notice himself, “entirely inadequate”, helpful only for
“beginners” (Blanton, 1971, p. 48), and “essentially negative” (Freud
& Ferenczi, 2000, p. 332): they outlined what analysts should not do,
rather than formulating positive principles.
87
For a long time, little was known about Freud’s own analytic methods,
which opened the floodgates for fantasies of all kinds. For instance, it
was often tacitly assumed that he practised according to the recommen-
dations that he published, which sometimes, underhandedly, elevated
these “recommendations” into general, authoritative “dos and don’ts”.
This image, however, is increasingly challenged by the publication of
unabbreviated correspondence, of memoirs, of interviews, and of other
documents. New material of this sort keeps surfacing, and forces us to
continuously reconsider the question of Freud’s method.
At present, a diverse range of sources allows insights into Freud’s
way of working:
Texts by Freud himself

In addition to his clinical histories and case notes (e.g., Freud, 1955a),
Freud left a wealth of letters, in which he not only reflects upon his
practice but also provides supervision for his followers.
Memoirs by former analysands

Relatively many of Freud’s former analysands have recorded and
published recollections of their analysis, among them Smiley Blanton
(1971), Helene Deutsch (1973), John Dorsey (1976), Roy Grinker (1975,
1979), “H. D.” [Hilda Doolittle] (1956), Abram Kardiner (1977), Kata
Lévy-Freund (1990), Sergej Pankejeff (in Gardiner, 1971; cf. Obholzer,
1980), Adolph Stern (1922), Bruno Walter (1946), and Joseph Wortis
(1984) (also cf. Ruitenbeek, 1973). Further recollections still remain
unpublished, for instance those of the painter and graphic artist Rudolf
Kriser (1954), and the exhaustive diaries Marie Bonaparte kept about
her analysis (see Bertin, 1982). The most detailed among the records
that have been published to date are probably those of Ernst Blum,
which the analysand put down after each session with Freud’s consent
(Pohlen, 2006).
Interviews with former analysands

Here, the work of Kurt Eissler and Paul Roazen is most notable, as both
have conducted many interviews with former analysands of Freud’s,
albeit with different intentions in mind. By his own account, Roazen
interrogated twenty-five former patients (1995, p. xviii) and processed
F R E U D T H E A N A LY S T A N D T H E R A P I S T 89
the information thus gathered in several books and articles (cf., Roazen,
1971, 1992, 1995). The transcripts of Eissler’s interviews (Library of
Congress, Sigmund Freud Collection) are still only partly accessible
even today, although some of them have been assessed in first explora-
tory publications. Drawing on an unpublished autobiography and on
one of Eissler’s interviews, for instance, David Lynn has written about
Freud’s analysis of Emma Eckstein’s nephew Albert Hirst (Lynn, 1997).
In cooperation with George Vaillant, Lynn has also analysed forty-three
of Freud’s cases in terms of how Freud dealt with anonymity, neutrality,
and confidentiality (Lynn & Vaillant, 1998).
Reports in secondary literature

From secondary literature, we know, for instance, of Freud’s thera-
peutic intervention with Gustav Mahler (Jones, 1955, pp. 79–80). As
becomes apparent in this case and others—for instance with Bruno
Walter2 and Bruno Götz3 (see Gay, 1988, pp. 166–167; Goldmann,
1985)—Freud without doubt engaged in therapeutic as well as analyti-
cal work.4
Freud’s patient calendars

Some years ago, Christfried Tögel drew attention to a relevant source
that had previously gone unnoticed: namely, Freud’s calendars kept at
the Freud Museum in London, which document patient appointments
for the time between October 1910 and December 1920 without any
gaps. Tögel himself (2009) and Ulrike May (2006, 2007a, 2007b, 2008)
have made first attempts at analysing this fascinating material, which
seems recalcitrant only at the first glance. With these three calendars,
“we have at our disposal a protocol of about ten years of his therapeutic
activity, which provides us with previously inconceivable opportunities
to inform ourselves about his practice extensively and meticulously”
(May, 2006, p. 43).
Sigmund Freud not only introduced a completely new perspec-
tive for addressing mental life, but also developed the very instru-
ment that made such research possible. This instrument is called
psychoanalysis.5 What, now, is psychoanalysis in this sense? Freud’s
answer: “The session … proceeds like a conversation between two peo-
ple equally awake, but one of whom is spared every muscular exer-
tion and every distracting sensory impression which might divert his
attention from his own mental activity” (Freud, 1904a, p. 250). In 1926,
he corroborates: “Nothing takes place between them except they talk to
each other” (Freud, 1926e, p. 187).
The partner in this conversation, the analysand, is encouraged to
“‘let himself go’ in what he says, ‘as you would do in a conversation
in which you were rambling on quite disconnectedly and at ran-
dom’” (Freud, 1904a, p. 251), and to “act as though, for instance,
you were a traveller sitting next to the window of a railway carriage
and describing to someone inside the carriage the changing views
which you see outside” (Freud, 1913c, p. 135). On the other hand, the
analyst should “not direct … one’s notice to anything in particular
and … maintain … the same ‘evenly suspended attention’” (Freud,
1912e, p. 111). Nothing is too insubstantial or embarrassing to keep
it from being noticed and addressed. On the contrary! It is this radi-
cal honesty that sets Freud’s method apart: “analysis … is in the first
place an honest establishment of the facts” (Freud & Pfister, 1963,
p. 87).
Both requirements—to talk and to listen minutely and attentively—
provoke resistance. This honesty sets out to perceive with as little preju-
dice as possible, an endeavour that the individual nevertheless tries to
counter “by every possible critical expedient, until at last he feels posi-
tive discomfort” (Freud, 1904a, p. 251). Potent affective powers protect
the core of the impulses and imaginations that are staved off, around
which the free associations keep pulsing, forever beating around the
bush. Freud has thus “developed … an art of interpretation” (Freud,
1904a, p. 252) that should allow access to the original meaning of what
is said.
When Freud published his programmatic article Freud’s Psycho-
Analytic Procedure (1904a), he had already experienced in practice how
these affective powers could also be channelled into “transference”.
Three years earlier, he had addressed this in the Dora analysis:
What are transferences? They are new editions or facsimiles of the

impulses and phantasies which are aroused and made conscious
during the progress of the analysis; but they have this peculiar-
ity, which is characteristic for their species, that they replace some
earlier person by the person of the physician. To put it another
way: A whole series of psychological experiences are revived …
as applying to the person of the physician at the present moment.
(Freud, 1905e, p. 116)
While he had initially probably provoked it without intention,6 Freud

later recognises transference as a fundamental component of the ana-
lytic encounter. After all, in the same essay, he postulates that once
one is aware of transference, it is the “most powerful ally” to analysis
(ibid., p. 117).
In his own words, Freud set out “to understand something of the rid-
dles of the world in which we live and perhaps even contribute to their
solution” (Freud, 1927a, p. 253)—human riddles, as we may assume,
even though he claims to have “no knowledge of … any craving … to
help suffering humanity” (ibid., p. 253). As he was taught in his train-
ing, it was his scientific ideal to create a laboratory-like situation, which
would allow him to observe the phenomena unfolding there without
asserting any influence on them himself. In his study of “human condi-
tions”, this scientific ideal necessarily clashed with his own needs and
his personal ideas of morality; a morality that he always regarded as
something “that goes without saying” (Freud, 1905a, p. 267). Freud was
forced to develop a number of defences that would help him deal with
the affects emerging in the therapeutic relationship. In a letter to Fer-
enczi’s lover Gizella Pálos, for instance, he described himself as “hard-
hearted” (Freud & Ferenczi, 1993, p. 321)—however, as he was quick
to add, “out of sympathy and softness” (ibid.). He saw himself as “a
sensitive ass [who] never ceases making a fool of himself, even when he
has grey hair” (ibid., p. 333).
From many sources, we know that Freud allowed in his treatments
for a sphere in which he did not act “abstinent”, but in which he
could react in a spontaneous, moralistic, hurt, angry, loving, lectur-
ing, or effervescent manner. About his former patient E., for instance,
he wrote to Fliess: “He demonstrated the reality of my theory in my
own case, providing me in a surprising reversal with the solution,
which I had overlooked, to my former railroad phobia. For this piece
of work I even made him the present of a picture of Oedipus and the
Sphinx” (Freud, 1985, pp. 391–392). Another example: Albert Hirst’s
analysis began in 1903, when Hirst was sixteen years old. Freud
encouraged Hirst to sit down on the chair in the exact position that
he took when he masturbated. He assured Hirst that masturbation
was not a harmful activity, which greatly relieved the patient (Lynn,
1997, p. 74).
In Freud’s notes on the case of the “Rat Man” we can read that he
repeatedly thought it “necessary” to “give [his patient] a piece of the
theory” (Freud, 1955a, p. 522), that he made him “compliment[s] for the
lucidity with which he expresses those states” (ibid., p. 521),7 and that
he demanded his patient bring a photograph of his lady, which led to
complications (“Violent struggle, bad day. Resistance”; ibid., p. 260). We
also learn what his analysand thought about a postcard sent to him by
Freud, namely, that “signed ‘cordially’ was too intimate” (ibid., p. 293),
and that Freud “gave him Zola’s Joie de Vivre to read” (ibid., p. 306).
Freud also writes: “Once when he had told me that his girl had lain on
her stomach and her genital hairs were visible from behind, I had said
to him that it was a pity that women nowadays gave no care to them
and spoke of them as unlovely” (ibid., p. 311). Freud even treated his
patient to dinner8 (“He was hungry and was fed”, ibid., p. 303)—the
host served herring. In the following session, “there was a transference
phantasy. Between two women—my wife and my mother—a herring
was stretched, extending from the anus of one to that of the other. A girl
cut it in two … All he could say at first was that he disliked herrings
intensely … The girl was one he had seen on the stairs and had taken to
be my twelve-year-old daughter” (ibid., pp. 307–308). The patient then
confessed to Freud that he had been suspicious from very early on in
the therapy, since “[h]e knew, he said, that a great misfortune had once
befallen my family: a brother of mine, who was a waiter, had commit-
ted a murder in Budapest and been executed for it. I asked him with a
laugh how he knew that, whereupon his whole affect collapsed” (ibid.,
p. 285).
There are also a number of reports that account for Freud’s activi-
ties in later years. Abram Kardiner, for instance, writes: “At the end of
the fifth month, March [1922], he began saying: ‘Herr Doktor, ein bischen
(sic) Durcharbeitung [working through].’ Now, this idea caused me a
good deal of bewilderment … From this point on, the analysis drifted”
(Kardiner, 1977, pp. 62–63). About Clarence Oberndorf’s analysis with
Freud, Kardiner relates how Freud stubbornly insisted on one of his
interpretations: “This interpretation infuriated Oberndorf, and they
haggled about this dream for months, until Freud got tired of it and
discontinued the analysis” (ibid., p. 76). “The fact that Freud talked to
me excited a good deal of attention in Vienna, so much that one day
I was honored with an invitation to tea by James Strachey and John
Rickman … John Rickman said to me, ‘I understand Freud talks to you.’
I said, ‘Yes, he does, all the time.’ They said: ‘Well, how do you do it?’
I answered, ‘I don’t exactly know … How is it with you?’ They both
said, ‘He never says a word’” (ibid., pp. 77–78).
Obviously, to Freud, analysis was not a realm beyond morality, as

he remarked to Smiley Blanton: “Es gibt in der Analyse nichts, was
menschlichen Errungenschaften und moralischer Würde Abbruch tut”
(Blanton, 1971). On 13 February 1930, Freud makes Blanton a present
of a volume of his collected works—not without adding that Blanton
“aus der Lektüre Gewinn ziehen würde” (Blanton, 1971). John Dorsey,
who was in analysis with Freud between 1935 and 1937, related, for
instance: “I recall during a session his leaning over the couch and sing-
ing [!] one or two strains to me from Mozart’s Don Giovanni” (Dorsey,
1976, p. 51). And what happened in this one session (1933) that Hilda
Doolittle recalls?
I did not know what enraged him suddenly. I veered round off the
couch, my feet on the floor … The professor himself is uncanonical
enough; he is beating with his hand, with his fist on the head-piece
of the old-fashioned horsehair sofa … And even as I veered around,
facing him, my mind was detached enough to wonder if this was
some idea of his for speeding up the analytic content or redirect-
ing the flow of associated images. The Professor said, “The trouble
is—I am an old man—you do not think it worth your while to love me.”
(Doolittle, 1956, pp. 15–16, italics in original)
And, in a letter to Doolittle: “What you gave me was not praise, was
[sic] affection and I need not be ashamed of my satisfaction. Life at my
age is not easy, but spring is beautiful and so is love” (ibid., p. 197).
Let us remember in this context that Freud did not want to take on a
maternal role.
He had said, “And, I must tell you (you were frank with me and
I will be frank with you), I do not like to be the mother in trans-
ference—it always surprises and shocks me a little. I feel so very
masculine.” I asked him if others had what he called this mother-
transference on him. He said ironically and I thought a little wist-
fully, “Oh, very many.” (Doolittle, 1956, p. 52, italics in original)
Similarly, he told Kardiner, “that I am too much the father” (Kardiner,

1977, p. 69). To Groddeck: “Your putting of my person in the mother
sequence—into which I obviously do not fit—… shows clearly how you
want to evade the father transference” (Freud & Groddeck, 1974, p. 59).9
Let us also recall that Freud did not like psychotics: “I finally admitted
to myself that I did not like those patients … They make me angry and
I find myself irritated to experience them so distant from myself and
from all that is human. This is an astonishing intolerance which brands
me a poor psychiatrist … Do I act like earlier doctors acted against the
hysterics, could my attitude result from my ever increasing partisan-
ship for the primate of the intellect, from a hostility towards the Id? Or
what else might it be?” (Letter to István Hollós, in Schur, 1966, p. 10;
Dupont, 1988, p. 251)10
In multiple instances, he made disparaging remarks about his
“nuts” (Freud & Jung, 1974, p. 359) and “fools” (Freud & Ferenczi, 1996,
p. 252), and “shared with only a trusted few” his “pessimistic view”
that the “neurotics are rabble, good only to support us financially and
to allow us to learn from their cases; psychoanalysis as a therapy may
be worthless” (Ferenczi, 1932, pp. 185–186). To Binswanger’s ques-
tion about his position towards his patients, Freud answered: “I could
wring their necks, all of them” (Binswanger, 1956, p. 56). To Fließ, he
wrote: “When I am not cheerful and collected, every single one of my
patients is my tormentor. I really believed I would have to give up on
the sot” (Freud, 1985, p. 404). To Edoardo Weiss: “Consider further-
more that, regretfully, only a few patients are worth the trouble we
spend on them, so that we are not allowed to have a therapeutic atti-
tude, but we must be glad to have learned something in every case”
(Weiss, 1991, p. 37).
If, however, he felt that someone was close to him and “the cause”,
Freud could act almost affectionately. The members of the secret com-
mittee he called his “children” or his “adopted children” (Freud &
Ferenczi, 1993, pp. 463 and 465). He advised Ferenczi, with whom Jones
was in analysis at the time: “Be strict and tender with him [Jones]. He
is a very good person. Feed the pupa so that a queen can be made out
of it” (ibid., p. 490). About Ernst Jones’s girlfriend Loe Kann, who had
her analysis with Freud at the same time, he confessed: “This Loe has
become extraordinarily dear to me, and I have produced with her a very
warm feeling with complete sexual inhibition, as has rarely been the
case before (probably owing to my age)” (ibid., p. 499). During Kann’s
analysis, Jones was sleeping with her nurse and companion Lina, which
led Freud to remark that he still respected Jones highly, who, after all,
was able to work through the episode in analysis, and thus provided
the analyst with an interesting—if dangerous—experiment (ibid., 466).
It is well known that when the so-called Wolf Man lost his fortune,
Freud supported him financially. “Freud also encouraged Bruno Goetz,
who suffered from facial neuralgia in 1904, to self-education, and gave
him 200 Kronen on top of his recipe for painkillers, so that he could
afford to buy a beef steak every once in a while” (Goldmann, 1985,
p. 316). Dr Max Graf, father of “Little Hans”, tells the following tale:
His second wife was in analysis with Freud, and got in trouble with her
parents. Her mother announced “she would no longer pay for treat-
ment. Then the young lady went to Freud and said: ‘Professor Freud,
unfortunately I cannot continue with the treatment, can I; you see,
I don’t have the funds for it.’ And Freud told her: ‘Why, and you cannot
bring yourself to continue with the treatment as a poor girl?’ And she
accepted this, you know?! He treated her without taking any payment
for it” (Interview with Kurt Eissler on 16 December 1952, Library of
Congress, Manuscript Division).
On the other hand, Freud did not hold back from judging others dur-
ing an analysis. “About Dr. Horney, he said: She is able but malicious—
mean” (Blanton, 1971, p. 65). His involvement went so far that he
interfered substantially with his students’ and analysands’ private
lives: Pfister, for instance, he strongly encouraged to divorce from his
wife (Freud & Jung, 1974); Horace Frink he pressured into leaving his
wife to marry someone else (see Edmunds, 1988); Ferenczi he tried to
keep from marrying Elma Pálos; Helene Deutsch he advised to end the
analysis of Viktor Tausk, a request with which she obliged (see Roazen,
1969)—interferences that in many cases brought with them uncomfort-
able, at times even devastating, effects.
From these records emerges a multi-faceted—if probably still
somewhat distorted and incomplete—image of Freud the therapist.11
Without analysing, judging or weighing these reports too much, it
can still be observed that Freud was obviously very reserved in some
cases, whereas he got extraordinarily involved in others. They show
that he did get involved with patients that interested him, that he
gave them gifts or offered them jobs (for instance, translations); and
that he did not hide his personality doing so, but often enough made
use of it in the process. This contrasts strongly with his published
statements, in which he generally recommended a much more con-
servative stance.
In other words, in practice Freud broke his own prohibitions so
often that it would be grossly misleading to read his methodological
publications as reliable sources that described how he actually worked.

It almost seems as if with him, these aberrations were not the exception,
but the rule.12 Considering the blunders that his sorcerer’s apprentices
stumbled into at times, he could act the part of their “venerable old
master” (Freud & Jung, 1974, p. 290), who was free to ignore his own
advice should it not fit an occasion for whatever reason.
On the other hand, he also conceded that his students need not
stick fast to all these rules—a fact that is perhaps not acknowledged
widely enough. To give only one example: when his analysand Irmarita
Putnam told him about a female patient of hers for whom she had done
all kinds of things that violated the “rule” of abstinence (she had, for
instance, given her money, and had an artist paint her portrait), Freud
said: “Sometimes one has to be both mother and father to a patient.”
And: “You do what you can.” According to Putnam, Freud was “com-
pletely unorthodox”. To Freud, the only thing that mattered was that
the analyst’s measure “did not mean some personal gratification
for the analyst but was in the interest of the patient” (Roazen, 1995,
pp. 192–193). It is more important what one is for a patient, than what
one does for him (Bertin, 1982, p. 291).13
Freud was not only flexible regarding his “technique”, but also in
the choice of the setting. This does not only apply to Max Eitingon’s
famous “analysis” in walking (similarly, the therapeutic intervention
with Gustav Mahler had taken place while on a four-hour stroll), but
it was indeed characteristic. Freud’s practice generally distinguished
itself in that he did not offer the same “standard” analysis to everyone
(x hours per week for a minimum duration of x months) but tended to
customise sessions according to the needs of individual cases and of
himself, as well as requirements dictated by particular circumstances—
for instance, when an analysand would come in from abroad, or when
they only had limited time or money at their disposal. Duration and
frequency of treatment varied greatly: between 1910 and 1920 alone,
we find analyses that lasted between a couple of days and many years,
that needed only a few sittings or over 1,000 hours, and that required
between three and nineteen-and-a-half (!) hours per week (May, 2007a,
2007b).
Among all these sources, the diary of the analysis that is published
here for the first time in English takes a very particular place: first, it
documents a therapeutic intervention and not a so-called training anal-
ysis;14 second, it took place before Freud was diagnosed with cancer;
and third, it consists of notes that seem to document word for word
snippets of what was said in the consulting room. While there are many
other documents that fulfil one or the other of these criteria, none of the
previously published accounts meets all three of them. The by far larg-
est part culls from the accounts of analysands undergoing analysis as
a necessary part of their training to become analysts themselves. Most
of those analyses took place after Freud was operated on for cancer,
which notably affected his “technique”: he became hard of hearing in
one of his ears, and speaking was difficult and even painful for him. As
a consequence, he appeared more reticent, which is perhaps also due to
the fact that most of these analyses were conducted in English.15 And
finally, only a few of these records contain such a detailed protocol of
the therapeutic dialogue as Anna Guggenbühl’s diary does.
This book illustrates how Freud worked in this particular case. In gen-
eral, it can be said that Anna’s report does not fundamentally challenge our
more recent conception of the clinical Freud that has slowly built up dur-
ing the last years and decades. It does, however, provide additional facets
to this image—and it remains a pleasure to be able to look into Freud’s
practice over his shoulder (cf. Cremerius, 1981). We can only be grateful
to Anna Koellreuter and her mother—Anna Guggenbühl’s daughter—for
deciding to share this valuable document with the interested public.
Notes
1. A first mention of Freud’s plan to draft a “General Methodology of Psy-
choanalysis” can be found in his letter to Abraham of 9 January 1908
(Freud & Abraham, 2002, p. 20). He pursued the project until 1910,
when he abandoned it in its comprehensive form, and, between 1911
and 1915, published a series of short articles instead (cf., the editor’s
introduction to Freud, 1985, pp. 85–88).
2. One of the most important conductors of the twentieth century.
3. A Swiss poet who attended university in Vienna at the time.
4. “Il n’y a pas de doute que Freud avait une activité psychothérapeu-
tique, même dans les années de maturité” [There is no doubt that Freud
acted as a psychotherapist, even in his mature years] (Haynal, 2007,
p. 242).
5. “What characterizes psycho-analysis as a science is not the material
which it handles but the technique with which it works … What it
aims at and achieves is nothing other than the uncovering of what is
unconscious in mental life” (Freud, 1916–1917, p. 389).
6. He initially understood transference as an interfering factor, or even, in

the Dora case, as the reason for why treatment can fail.
7. Translator’s note: the two quotations from Freud, 1955a, are missing in
the English Standard Edition. Translation from the German version by
KPH.
8. This was not the first such invitation, either: one female patient L. G.
“was my guest one evening, and will be invited regularly” (Freud,
1985, p. 406). “E. at last concluded his career as a patient by coming to
dinner at my house” (ibid., p. 409).
9. Translator’s note: translation from the German by Peter L. Rudnytsky
(2002, p. 156).
10. Translator’s note: as only part of the paragraph quoted here exists in
English translation in Dupont, 1988, the translation above is a compos-
ite of Dupont’s and my own.
11. There are many books and articles dealing with the development of
Freud’s technique, which could not be addressed here. The most com-
prehensive overview so far, which also looks back at procedures of psy-
choanalytic treatment before 1920 on a more general level, can be found
in Leitner (2001).
12. Paul Roazen even suggests that the gap between what Freud recom-
mended in public and what he practised was so great that it necessi-
tated a “conspiracy of silence” among those of his followers who were
aware of it (Roazen, 1995, p. xxii).
13. “Plus important que ce que l’on fait est ce que l’on est.” This is my
translation of the French original text, as the German translation twists
the sentence around and changes its meaning: “Wichtiger als das, was
man ist, ist das, was man macht” (p. 315). With thanks to André Haynal.
14. Even if the difference between these procedures was not at all clearly
cut in the early days of psychoanalysis. In Guggenbühl’s case it is evi-
dent that she sought treatment to make a decision about the relation-
ship to her fiancé, not to become an analyst herself.
15. “[T]he most significant single event in Freud’s life as a practicing ana-
lyst was his getting cancer of the jaw in 1923; among those I met who
had been in analysis with Freud that even constituted a genuine water-
shed. Significantly, he never wrote another case history afterward …
[He was] altogether less outgoing than before in his clinical practice. It
now hurt Freud to talk” (Roazen, 1992, p. 293).
References
Bertin, C. (1982). Marie Bonaparte. Paris: Plon, 1999.
Binswanger, L. (1956). Erinnerungen an Sigmund Freud. Bern: Francke.
Blanton, S. (1971). Diary of My Analysis with Freud. New York:
Hawthorn.
Cremerius, J. (1981). Freud bei der Arbeit über die Schulter geschaut: Seine
Technik im Spiegel von Schülern und Patienten. Jahrbuch der Psychoana-
lyse, Beiheft 6: 123–158.
Deutsch, H. (1973). Confrontations with Myself: An Epilogue. New York:
Norton.
Doolittle, H. (1956). Tribute to Freud: With Unpublished Letters by Freud to the
Author. New York: Pantheon.
Dorsey, J. M. (1976). An American Psychiatrist in Vienna, 1935–1937, and his
Sigmund Freud. Detroit, MI: Center for Health Education.
Dupont, J. (1988). Ferenczi’s “madness”. Contemporary Psychoanalysis, 24:
250–261.
Edmunds, L. (1988). His master’s choice. Johns Hopkins Magazine, April:
40–49.
Ferenczi, S. (1932). The Clinical Diary of Sándor Ferenczi. M. Balint &
N. Zarday Jackson (Trans.), J. Dupont (Ed.). Cambridge, MA: Harvard
University Press, 1995.
Freud, S. (1904a). Freud’s psycho-analytic procedure. S. E., 7: 249–254.
London: Hogarth.
Freud, S. (1905a). On psychotherapy. S. E., 7: 257–268. London: Hogarth.
Freud, S. (1905e). Fragment of an analysis of a case of hysteria. S. E., 7:
Freud, S. (1911–1915). Papers on Technique. S. E., 12: 85–156. London: Hogarth.
Freud, S. (1912e). Recommendations to physicians practising psycho-
analysis. S. E., 12: 111–120. London: Hogarth.
Freud, S. (1913c). On beginning the treatment (Further recommenda-
tions on the technique of psycho-analysis I). S. E., 12: 123–144. London:
Hogarth.
Freud, S. (1916–1917). Introductory Lectures on Psycho-Analysis. S. E., 15–16.
London: Hogarth.
Freud, S. (1926e). The Question of Lay Analysis. S. E., 20: 183–250.
Freud, S. (1927a). Postscript to The Question of Lay Analysis. S. E., 20:
Freud, S. (1955a). Original record of the case of obsessional neurosis (the
“Rat Man”). S. E., 10: 259–318. London: Hogarth.
Freud, S. (1985). The Complete Letters of Sigmund Freud to Wilhelm Fliess,
1887–1904. J. Moussaieff Masson (Ed.). Cambridge, MA: Belknap.
Freud, S., & Abraham, K. (2002). The Complete Correspondence of Sigmund

Freud and Karl Abraham, 1907–1925. E. Falzeder (Ed.). London:
Karnac.
Freud, S., & Ferenczi, S. (1993). The correspondence of Sigmund Freud and Sándor
Ferenczi: Volume 1, 1908–1914. E. Brabant, E. Falzeder, & P. Giampieri-
Deutsch (Eds.). P. T. Hoffer (Trans.). Cambridge, MA: Belknap.
Freud, S., & Ferenczi, S. (1996). The correspondence of Sigmund Freud and
Sándor Ferenczi: Volume 2, 1914–1919. E. Falzeder & E. Brabant (Eds.).
P. T. Hoffer (Trans.). Cambridge, MA: Belknap.
Freud, S., & Ferenczi, S. (2000). The correspondence of Sigmund Freud and Sán-
dor Ferenczi: Volume 3, 1920–1933. E. Falzeder & E. Brabant (Eds.). P. T.
Hoffer (Trans.). Cambridge, MA: Belknap.
Freud, S., & Groddeck, G. (1974). Briefe über das Es. M. Honegger (Ed.).
Munich: Kindler.
Freud, S., & Jung, C. G. (1974). The Freud / Jung Letters. W. McGuire (Ed.).
R. F. C. Hull & R. Manheim (Trans.). Princeton, NJ: Princeton.
Freud, S., & Pfister, O. (1963). Psychoanalysis and Faith: The Letters of Sig-
mund Freud and Oskar Pfister. H. Meng & E. L. Freud (Eds.). New York:
Basic.
Gardiner, M. (Ed.) (1971). The Wolf Man. New York: Basic.
Gay, P. (1988). Freud: A Life for Our Time. New York: Norton, 2006.
Grinker, R. R. Sr. (1975). Reminiscences of Dr. Roy Grinker. Journal of the
American Academy of Psychoanalysis, 3: 211–221.
Grinker, R. R. Sr. (1979). Fifty Years in Psychiatry: A Living History. Spring-
field, IL: Charles C. Thomas.
Goldmann, S. (Ed.) (1985). Sigmund Freuds Briefe an seine Patientin Anna
v. Vest: Eine Kur aus der Frühzeit der Psychoanalyse. Jahrbuch der Psy-
choanalyse, 17: 269–337.
Haynal, A. (2007). Freud psychothérapeute. Essai historique. Psychothé-
rapies, 27: 239–242.
Haynal, André (2009). Notizen und Fragen an Freud und Frau G. zum
“Fall G.”. Ernst Falzeder (Transl.). In Anna Koellreuter (Ed.). “Wie
benimmt sich der Prof. Freud eigentlich?”: Ein neu entdeckes Tagebuch
von 1921 historisch und analytisch kommentiert, pp. 237–245. Gießen:
Psychosozial-Verlag.
Jones, E. (1955). The Life and Work of Sigmund Freud (Volume 2). New York:
Basic.
Kardiner, A. (1977). My Analysis with Freud: Reminiscences. New York: Norton.
Kriser, R. (1954). Erinnerungen. Unpublished manuscript. Library of Con-
gress, Manuscript Division.
Leitner, M. (2001). Ein gut gehütetes Geheimnis: Die Geschichte der psychoana-
lytischen Behandlungstechnik von den Anfängen in Wien bis zur Gründung
der Berliner Poliklinik im Jahr 1920. Gießen: Psychosozial.
Lévy-Freund, K. (1990). Dernières vacances des Freud avant la fin du

monde. Coq-Héron, Nr. 177 (July): 39–44.
Lynn, D. B. (1997). Sigmund Freud’s psychoanalysis of Albert Hirst.
Bulletin of the History of Medicine, 71: 69–93.
Lynn, D. B., & Vaillant, G. E. (1998). Anonymity, neutrality, and confiden-
tiality in the actual methods of Sigmund Freud: A review of 43 cases,
1907–1939. American Journal of Psychiatry, 155: 163–171.
May, U. (2006). Freud’s patient calendars: 17 analysts in analysis with Freud
(1910–1920). Psychoanalysis & History, 2007, 9: 153–200.
May, U. (2007a). Neunzehn Patienten in Analyse bei Freud (1910–1920). Teil
I: Zur Dauer von Freuds Analysen. Psyche—Zeitschrift für Psychoanalyse,
61: 590–625.
May, U. (2007b). Neunzehn Patienten in Analyse bei Freud (1910–1920). Teil
II: Zur Frequenz von Freuds Analysen. Psyche—Zeitschrift für Psychoana-
lyse, 61(7): 686–709.
May, U. (2008). Nineteen patients in analysis with Freud (1910–1920).
American Imago, 65(1): 41–105.
Obholzer, K. (1980). Gespräche mit dem Wolfsmann: Eine Psychoanalyse und die
Folgen. Reinbek: Rowohlt.
Pohlen, M. (2006). Freuds Analyse: Die Sitzungsprotokolle Ernst Blums.
Reinbek: Rowohlt.
Roazen, P. (1969). Brother Animal: The Story of Freud and Tausk. New York:
Random.
Roazen, P. (1971). Freud and His Followers. New York: Alfred A. Knopf.
Roazen, P. (1992). Freud’s patients: First-person accounts. In: T. Gelfand &
J. Kerr (Eds.), Freud and the History of Psychoanalysis (pp. 289–306). Hills-
dale, NJ: Analytic.
Roazen, P. (1995). How Freud Worked: First-hand Accounts of Patients.
Northvale: Aronson.
Rudnytsky, P. L. (2002). Reading Psychoanalysis: Freud, Rank, Ferenczi,
Groddeck. Ithaca, NY: Cornell.
Ruitenbeek, H. M. (Ed.) (1973). Freud as We Knew Him. Detroit, MI: Wayne
State University Press.
Schur, M. (1966). Das Es und die Regulationsprinzipien des psychischen
Geschehens. Frankfurt: Fischer, 1973.
Stern, A. (1922). Some personal psychoanalytical experiences with Prof.
Freud. New York State Journal of Medicine, 22: 21–25.
Tanco-Duque, R. (1988). Bemerkungen zur Abstinenz in der analytischen
Situation. In: In Memoriam Igor A. Caruso (pp. 77–84). Salzburg: Öster-
reichische Studiengesellschaft für Kinderpsychoanalyse.
Tögel, C. (2009). Sigmund Freud’s practice: Visits and consultations, psy-
choanalyses, remunerations. Psychoanalytic Quarterly, 78: 1033–1058.
Walter, B. (1946). Themes and Variations. New York: Knopf.
Weiss, E. (1991). Sigmund Freud as a Consultant: Recollections of a Pioneer in

Psychoanalysis. New Brunswick, NJ: Transaction.
Winnicott, D. W. (1962). The aims of psychoanalytical treatment. In: The
Maturational Processes and the Facilitating Environment: Studies in the The-
ory of Emotional Development. (pp. 166–170). London: Hogarth, 1965.
Wortis, J. (1984). My Analysis with Freud. Northvale: Aronson, 1994.
CHAPT ER S IX
Notes and questions for Freud and

Ms Guggenbühl talking about the
“G case study”
André Haynal*
T
he following text does not set out to prove or achieve anything.
It does not present ideas that illustrate Ms Guggenbühl’s dis-
course. I just want to follow this discourse like a third ear; I want,
so to speak, to rummage in it for a little bit. After all, it invites us to look
back and reflect on how a specific therapeutic concept and its underly-
ing theory was put into practice at a specific historical point in time.
What we cannot see clearly here is the theory. Even though it hap-
pens before our very eyes, we cannot spot it. What we can make out
are images of a life, and a will to live. We are looking at a new culture
that the analysand represents, but which cannot come to light easily.
In the background, we see a Freud who is addressing us as a teacher.
We are met with memories that are, as memories tend to be, distorted
and disfigured. Of course, memories are always more than the sum
of single souvenirs, keepsakes, or mementos. However, the process of
* Translator’s note: the English version of this article is based on the German version,
which is itself a translation from the French by Ernst Falzeder (Notizen und Fragen
an Freud und Frau G. Zum “Fall G.” In: A. Koellreuter (Ed.), Wie benimmt sich der Prof.
Freud eigentlich? Ein neu entdecktes Tagebuch von 1921 historisch und analytisch kommentiert.
Gießen: Psychosozial-Verlag, 2009).
103
recalling—as this particular discourse seems to call out to the author of

this chapter in the year 2008—can never completely free itself from the
single instances of memory. Old pictures engage us when they show
things that no longer exist: these records tell us what exactly was got
rid of in acts of “chimney sweeping”. Remembrance always amounts
to more than memories and keepsakes, but these memories and keep-
sakes suggest in themselves that remembrance without them would not
be possible. Old documents rouse our interest when they can show us
something that no longer exists in this specific form, but the repercus-
sions of which are still present, and can still be felt today.
A modern woman becomes a doctor and is determined to live an
independent life. This woman remembers Freud, her liberator, in a
piece of writing. In 1921, seven years after “Remembering, Repeating
and Working-Through” (Freud, 1914g), Freud presents himself as the
teacher of such a liberation. As he said about himself, “one works the
best of one’s power, as an elucidator (where ignorance has given rise
to fear), as a teacher, as the representative of a freer or superior view of
the world” (Freud, 1895d, p. 282, italics AH). Obviously, for the patient
he embodies an authority, a teacher. Whether Freud still generally saw
himself as such a teacher in 1921, or whether this was in fact peculiar to
Anna Guggenbühl’s treatment, can probably no longer be determined
from the present viewpoint. Perhaps he approached this special case
more as an analytic psychotherapy than as an actual analysis, that is, as a
treatment focusing on solving a specific problem, which seems plausible
also because of the therapy’s short duration. The patient, and also her
social environment, obviously saw Freud as The Great Man. In a letter of
17 June 1921, Guggenbühl’s mother refers to Freud’s work:
I also wondered if Prof. Freud couldn’t give you an hour a day

during the holidays, too. Such an interruption is really not good;
especially as he himself emphasises in his book that there is some-
thing like a Sunday hour, which has to be resolved on Monday. You
could easily go to the same place where he spends his holidays,
or what do you think about that? How long are Freud’s holidays,
anyway? Six weeks? Or longer? It’s all so difficult. (cf. Koellreuter,
2007)
At the beginning, topics emerge that Freud seems to leap at immedi-

ately (fighting the younger brother, masturbation). On the other hand,
N OT E S A N D Q U E S T I O N S F O R F R E U D A N D M S G 105
they could be artefacts stemming from an unintended selection by the

patient. In any case, we see that Freud quickly comes up with a coura-
geous, even bold, reconstruction in which he prises apart three levels:
the analysand’s relation to the parents, that to the brother, and finally
her conflict with Richard. All these elements are understood as con-
stituents of an Oedipal conflict: the analysand wants to put herself in
her mother’s place after a maternal “breach of fidelity”.
The script goes as follows: as noted before, a young woman does
not want to do what she is told, but rather something that appears to
be so much freer to her … To submit to expectation, or to take one’s
freedom, that is the question; to be free or not to be, that is the ques-
tion.1 But is this permitted? The problem presents itself in the form
of a doubt. And Freud understands it: he takes the side of freedom.
From Freud, the young woman receives support in accord with her
preconscious expectations: Freud turns into a friend.2 She is encour-
aged to live the life she thinks she needs to live. The analysand seems
to picture Freud as a teacher and a friend, as a friendly teacher with
considerable authority.
This is the point where once again we need to stress the possible
methodical constraints of the narrative. We may assume that the analy-
sand only wrote down what she herself considered interesting or signifi-
cant, which is why these notes necessarily represent a personal selection.
According to the notes, and as already addressed above, Freud begins
by tackling themes of the forbidden (pulling out a sapling on the bal-
cony, pinching the little brother, masturbation). Is it Freud himself who
accentuates these themes, or is this accent an artefact, a product of the
“third ear” of the person who records the conversation?
After mentioning the various acts of “bullying”, the analysand
remembers scenes from her time in grammar school. She thought she
“would like to love a youth who is immensely sad, and life would be
made possible for him through me, and he would also be happy then”
(no date, p. 3):3 an interrelation between torment and redress that is
reminiscent of Melanie Klein. In addition, she associates that she wants
to have children. But the children are killed by the men, the Hungerueli
Isegrind and the tomcats devour the children. What is surprising from
today’s point of view is that Freud—like in many other instances in
this narrative—refrains from commenting here; at least according to
this record. Perhaps he was not very talkative—as we know from other
memoirs, he could be quite reserved. On the other hand, he could also
indulge in long lectures. The report at hand includes examples of both

attitudes.
When we look at all the themes that Freud picked up and interpreted
during this treatment, we find those that concerned him all his life, that
have turned into central hubs in his theory, and that build up around
the Oedipus complex: father, Oedipal jealousy, the wish to substitute the
same-sex parent, fear of castration, bisexuality.4 After all, according to his
own accounts, the woman’s inner life, and the answer to the question
“what does a woman want?” was more or less kept from him through-
out his working life. The often-quoted dark continent (Freud, 1926e) and
the fact that he frequently remarked upon woman’s enigma—which,
supposedly, “throughout history, people have knocked their heads
against” (Freud, 1933a, p. 113)—did not seem to trouble him too much
in this particular case; only sometimes are there echoes of jealousy and
envy that resemble later Kleinian theory.
As de Saussure (1956) emphasises in an article on the occasion of his
former analyst’s 100th birthday, he had the impression that Freud, by
the early 1920s, was more concerned with presenting and discussing his
own ideas, than with discovering new angles in his patient’s discourse.
Formulating from today’s point of view, Freud apparently continued
an ongoing auto-analysis using the material brought in by his patients.
One fundamental sensibility seemed to be that one understood in the
other those things that one had discovered within oneself. This angle
had already surfaced, though in a hidden form, during Freud’s con-
troversy with Fließ (1985). After all, Fließ expressed the opinion that
Freud would uncover in his analysands’ material what he, beforehand,
had projected there himself. According to Freud, Fließ had accused him
of something “which deprives my work of all its value: ‘the reader of
thoughts merely reads his own thoughts into other people’” (Freud,
1895d, p. 447). In a modern form, however, this could also mean that
the analyst can only understand in the patient what has already become
sufficiently clear and understandable in their own analysis within them-
selves (which is a strong argument for training analysis, and highlights
the importance of countertransference!).
The thematic complex of taking off, of leaving a family that one
(the analysand?) does not feel one belongs to, leads to an association
with Schnitzler’s romantic novella The Shepherd’s Pipe. Perhaps the
novella’s young protagonist, who wants to leave her still new marriage
behind and is encouraged to follow her longing desire by her husband
(Freud?), is a picture with almost prophetic qualities, in which Anna

Guggenbühl’s later decision can already be foreseen.
According to the records, we can see that Freud developed the anal-
ysis predominantly on the basis of The Interpretation of Dreams (Freud,
1900a). It is not transference but dreams that give this interaction its
first meaning. Later on, however, it seems as if Freud grows tired of
this predominance of dreams, and he comments that there are people
who had “enough mental material at their disposal [to] solve every-
thing within their psyche” (15 April, p. 11). Freud also assumes that
the analysand’s flight towards her father means that the father was her
“first lover” (18 April, p. 16). Earlier, he had suggested the lovers as
a substitute for the brothers (no date, p. 5), and had himself referred
to his own publication about Dora (Freud, 1905e). Therefore, he puts
Anna Guggenbühl in Dora’s place—which probably is a distressing
memory to him. Freud also assumes that the fact that Anna is very
aware of her love for her brother “is useless, you cannot free yourself
from it, because it has deeper roots” (18 April, p. 17).
The phrase “I was being dreamed” (19 April, p. 17)—which recurs at
regular intervals, while other possible expressions like “I dreamed” are
not used once—convey an atmosphere in which the analysand could
inspect her Id, which needed interpretation, in her dreams. She also
needs Freud in order for him to correct her. She draws closer to the idea
“how it might be” to sleep with the father; however, she is quick to add,
“just as a game, without desire” (19 April, p. 18). Thus for her it is not a
wish, but an opportunity for thought, a “game”. Or is her remark (“just
as a game, without desire”) a negation or disavowal? Does Freud com-
ment aloud? Or does he keep his thoughts to himself? What thoughts
exactly? Do they have anything to do with the crossed-out fragment
“I am surprised, however, that …” (19 April, p. 18) that follows? Most
likely, we will never know.
Once again, the subject of separation comes into play, without being
interpreted as such by Freud. In contrast, he speaks of the death of the
mother “that is wished for” (19 April, p. 19)—also a separation! Anna
Guggenbühl goes on to speak of the termination of various relation-
ships; a possible prelude to her later decision to break her engagement?
When discussing a dream (21 April, p. 21) in which she helps
“Oesch … get over a wall” and then is “embraced”, Freud surprises us
with the following sentence: “Let us insert the symbols that we know
thanks to our insights” (21 April, p. 22). So Freud apodictically posits
the “insights” as shared. When the analysand relates a dream and her
association about a chess board, and remembers that her father and
mother used to play chess “before they became engaged” (21 April,
p. 22), Freud intervenes: “You are free to insert the symbols yourself,
so that you can make a connection when you get stuck with the associ-
ations” (21 April, p. 22f, italics AH). About the wall that needs to be
overcome for the embrace, he comments: “It is the hymen.” Here, the
analysand’s personal associations are being replaced by the method of
“interpretations of symbols”, like in the sections in The Interpretation of
Dreams that were, under the influence of Stekel and others, added in
later editions. Or does this impression rather arise from the selection
made by the author of the notes, that is, by the analysand? It is possible
that the interpretation of symbols impressed or affected her most, and
gave her the impression that she finally really pushed towards the id.
Or could this—very much to the contrary—also be an expression of her
resistance, since the focus on the more general interpretation of symbols
allows her to turn away from, and write less about, matters of a more
personal nature?
In his interpretational work, Freud is strongly led by his own con-
ceptions. For instance, there seems to be no doubt for him at all that
“the sun always stands for the father” (21 April, p. 24). Then he insists
that he himself represented the father, and that this fact provoked Anna
Guggenbühl’s resistance, like, for instance, the “idea that the cure is of
no benefit” to her (22 April, p. 28).
At this point, beating fantasies are brought into play: “this means
for the girl (child) to be loved in a sexual way” (22 April, p. 28). Freud
shows a strong interest for this topic. Can we assume that he is influ-
enced by his daughter Anna’s analysis, which took place while he was
treating Anna Guggenbühl (22 April, p. 27), and which he also dealt
with in his publication “A Child is Being Beaten” (Freud, 1919e)?
Following this, Freud indulges in Viennese sarcasm: “Aha, a Swiss
national diagnosis!” (22 April, p. 30), a remark followed in the analy-
sand’s notebook by three empty pages—a break of three days between 22
and 25 April. Could it be that she was offended?
Is it, then, some sort of compensation when Anna Guggenbühl con-
tinues her notes by thinking of the aged Goethe, and expresses the idea
that she “might want to marry someone older” (25 April, p. 31)? Freud,
of course, reads this idea as “transference to the father”. This section is
one of the few throughout the diary to explicitly address transference.
This is followed by close examination of the dynamic of self-deprecation

the analysand displays. Freud interprets it by referring to examples
of “other women” deprecating themselves, who “for instance [might]
say they’ve got haemorrhoids”—a remark upon which, for Anna
Guggenbühl “[n]othing comes to mind” (26 April, p. 35). To Freud,
this is “a spec.[ial] resistance”. Anna is taken aback: “I cannot tell
you how much I like you; I think I’ve never loved anybody that way
before” (26 April, p. 35). Unimpressed by this declaration of love, Freud
knows better. Without flinching, he continues: “This love for your father”
(26 April, p. 36; italics AH). Obediently, Anna resorts to associating about
her childhood, which gives Freud the opportunity to address the lady
with the haemorrhoids and Anna’s self-deprecation once again, which,
according to Freud, the analysand instrumentalises to disappoint him.
We can see that dealing with love was not all that easy even for Freud.
Is it half a slip (if such a thing exists) to say that the father had “erot.
[ic] feelings against5 me” (26 April, p. 41), instead of for me? A choice of
words; not necessarily a mistake in choosing words; but nevertheless
an interesting twist that may insinuate that this love was probably also
experienced as aggression.
In this context, nudity is brought into play: in the nude, she takes a
walk with her father. Is this an erotic seduction, or at least an attempt at
it? A sort of consolidation follows, a drop of blood on a finger (4 May,
p. 2:2), gonococci (4 May, p. 2:1), all of which, in the interpretation, can
be connected to genitalia. In further entries are condemnation, disfig-
urement, castration (no date, p. 2:16), and “sale boche”6 (10 June, p. 2:17).
We can see how heavily Freud’s interpretational work was influ-
enced by his own conceptions and theories. What is astonishingly
scarce is any discussion of the relational aspects, the play of trans-
ference and countertransference; in fact all affective dimensions in
general, which barely seem to surface at all. We can see how Ferenczi
and Rank were needed to point psychoanalysts towards the relational
dimension, and let them become susceptible to it. After all, we do not
know what Freud sensed. Still, this document shows that he did not
give much account about it to others (and perhaps also to himself).
From a wealth of examples, I could only discuss a few here, but nev-
ertheless they show how psychoanalysis has developed and evolved
continuously ever since.
In 1921, Freud was apparently holding on strong to many of his orig-
inal ideas. For a long time, the image of a man “of noble simplicity and
silent grandeur” (a famous expression of Johann Joachim Winkelmann,

1717–1768) was projected onto him; a man who proceeds incessantly,
without swerving or aberrations. However, this image, drawn in the
traditional literature, is corrected by Freud himself when he explores
other parts in later stages of his work; for instance, in his observations
on female sexuality, on fetishism, and, after 1936, on Moses and other
topics. In 1921, however, it is still a long way to these sensibilities.
It is understandable that Freud’s contemporary Vienna circle upheld
this image, and tried to preserve it when in emigration, especially in
North America and in the Hampstead group in London. At the same
time, it is also understandable that the more therapeutically inclined
analysts like Ferenczi had to depart from this way in some aspects
at least. And finally, what is also understandable is Ferenczi’s con-
cern about an increasingly dominant ego psychology (Ferenczi, 1932),
which is about to take central stage. As a consequence, Ferenczi, Rank,
Reik, Reich, Federn, and Weiss fall along the wayside, Helene Deutsch
falls into line, and Abraham’s Berlin becomes the leading model in
Europe, and later also in the United States, in particular in New York.
The politically savvy but always slightly paranoid Melanie Klein kept
referring to Abraham, though she actually meant Ferenczi at least
some of the time; she also slowly, unwillingly, and with considera-
ble caution began to speak about countertransference in the analytic
situation.
We get to feel that psychoanalysis is constantly evolving. The era
of the “primal analyses” (Which was when? During the early analyses
of hysteria? During the times of the Wolf Man and the Rat Man?)
was over in 1921, but it is nevertheless still strongly present. Let us
just think of how different this analysis is from others happening at
the same time—for instance, by Ferenczi in 1921—or from analysis
today, in this new millennium, in Paris or London, which will prob-
ably focus more on analysing relationships and affects. Do these
differences exist because, as is often implied, Freud was primar-
ily interested in theory, in metapsychology (anthropology), and thus
understood his patients as material, a sort of fodder for this endeav-
our? Ferenczi writes about this in his 1932 diary, and quotes Freud
referring to his patients as “rabble” and “only any good for making
money out of, and for studying” (entry from 12 June, Ferenczi, 1932,
p. 118). Without any doubt, however, and in spite of his fatigue and
his limited therapeutic pursuit, Freud here showed a sincere interest

in Ms Guggenbühl and provided his time and his energy coopera-
tively and empathically to her (and, we can assume, also to others). It
seems incomprehensible that it is still possible for serious publications
today to claim that psychoanalytic practices or techniques have not
changed (Fonagy & Target, 2003).
The analysis at hand is a milestone in an era that would later be con-
sidered as classic. Studying it, we can discern and analyse this era’s
basic concepts and its limitations. When exploring Anna Guggenbühl’s
diary, readers may be inspired by their own fantasies; in any case, their
exploration will be interesting and at times also pleasant and amusing.
Speaking from a historical perspective, I want to close with the fol-
lowing observations. All major themes of the Freudian fantasies are
present. Nevertheless, Anna feels understood, and can finally make
the desired, important, and (for her) probably also appropriate deci-
sions. Digressing from its starting theme, the analysis moves towards
questions that no longer quite correspond to the initial problem. To the
contemporary reader, the records cast a flashlight on Freud’s actual
methods of treatment at the time, albeit perhaps refracted by Anna
Guggenbühl’s personal selection, which probably only includes what
she found most important. We can only wonder why the play of trans-
ference and countertransference, and of affective exchange, which is
vital to present-day analytic ideas, is obviously absent. Tempora mutan-
tur nos et mutamur in illis.7
Notes
1. Translator’s note: phrase in italics is English in the original.
2. Translator’s note: the name “Freud” and the German word for friend,
“Freund”, are very similar. AH highlights this similarity with italics
in his original German text: “Freud verwandelt sich in einen Freund”
(Haynal, 2009, p. 236).
3. Unless otherwise noted, dates and page numbers correspond to dating
and pagination in the diary.
4. Words in italics are in English in the original.
5. See corresponding translator’s note in the diary.
6. Means in a French vulgar language: “dirty German”. (It can also been
applied to another German speaker.)
7. Times change, and we change with them.
References
Ferenczi, S. (1932). The Clinical Diary of Sándor Ferenczi. M. Balint &
N. Zarday Jackson (Trans.). J. Dupont (Ed.). Cambridge, MA: Harvard
University Press, 1995.
Fliess, W., & Freud, S. (1985). The Complete Letters of Sigmund Freud to Wilhelm
Fliess 1887–1904. Cambridge, MA: Harvard.
Fonagy, P., & Target, M. (2003). Psychoanalytic Theories. Perspectives from
Developmental Psychopathology. London: Whurr.
Freud, S. (1895d). Studies on Hysteria. S. E., 2. London: Hogarth.
Freud, S. (1905e). Fragment of an Analysis of a Case of Hysteria. S. E., 7:
Freud, S. (1914g). Remembering, Repeating and Working-Through (Further
Recommendations on the Technique of Psycho-Analysis, II). S. E., 12:
Freud, S. (1919e). A Child is Being Beaten. S. E., 17: 179–204. London:
Hogarth.
Freud, S. (1926e). The Question of Lay Analysis. S. E., 20: 179. London:
Hogarth.
Freud, S. (1933a). New Introductory Lectures on Psycho-Analysis. S. E., 22:
Koellreuter, A. (2007). Als Patientin bei Freud 1921. Aus dem Tagebuch
einer Analysandin. Werkblatt: Zeitschrift für Psychoanalyse und Gesells-
chaftskritik, 58: 3–23.
de Saussure, R. (1956). Sigmund Freud. In: H. M. Ruitenbeek (Ed.), Freud as
We Knew Him (pp. 357–359). Detroit: Wayne State, 1973.
INDEX
Abbruch, Würde, 93 betrayal, 3, 57

abortion, 13 Beyond the Pleasure Principle, 56
abstinence, 19, 54, 62, 76, 91, 96 Binswanger, L., 94
Adler, V., 74 Birnstiel, Gertrud, 18
Adolf (Anna’s brother), 3–4, 6, 8–10, Birnstiel, T., 18
14, 16, 20–22, 33, 45–46, 48, bisexuality, 106
60 Blanton, S., 63, 87, 93, 95
aggression, 6 Blum, E., 55–63
analysis, 90
Anna, G., x Cameron, L., xii
Antisemitischer Schutz- und Trutzbund, Carnival, 9–10
81 castration, 23, 25, 106, 109
anxiety, 11, 60, 74–75 Child is Being Beaten, A, 108
Arnold, H (Anna’s husband), 33, 46 “chimney sweeping”, 104
artificial groups, 75 Chinese fairy tale, 25
Austromarxismus, 72 Christian Social Party, 81
civilised sexual morality, 77
being beaten, 10–11 classical psychiatry, 71
being embarrassed, feeling of, 14 compassion, 21
Bernfeld, S., 76 competition, 24
Bertin, C., 88 conscious, 7
113
114 INDEX
Coriat, I. H., 83 ego psychology, 110

countertransference, xxi, 106, 109–111 Eissler, Kurt, 88, 95
see also transference Eitingon, M., xiii, 77, 84, 96
Cremerius, J., 63, 66, 97 empty transference, 65
cross-eyed thug, 17 Erdheim, M., 84
crying state, 2, 57 erotic transference, 61–62
excessive compassion, 21
Dätwyler, M., 72
de Saussure, R., 106 Fallend, K., 76
death, 7–8 Falzeder, E., 1
delusional idea, 18 fear of castration, 106
desire, 21 Federn, P., 74
for love, 11 Fenichel, O., 76
Deutsch, Helene, 4–6, 16, 88, 95, 110 Ferenczi, S., 64–65, 74, 87, 91, 94–95,
Development of Psychoanalysis, The, 64 109–110
diary filled-in transference, 66
Anna Guggenbühl’s, 38–43 Fliedl, K., 80
Ernst Blum’s, 55–62 Fonagy, P., 111
diary I, Anna’s, 38–41 “fools”, 94
Chlorophyll (page 32), 40 force of passion, 13
cover of, 38 Forrester, J., xii
Goethe (page 39), 40 Freud, A., 54, 77
page, 1, 39 Freud, E., 79
diary II, Anna’s Freud, S., 33–37, 51, 54, 56, 77, 79,
Leporello (page 3), 43 87–88, 90–98
sculptur (page 2), 38–42 “abstinent”, 91
diary of analysis activities, 92
first book, 1–18 analytic methods, 88
second book, 18–26 art of interpretation”, 90
Dionysia, 80 case notes, 88
disappointment, 12–13 clinical histories, 88
Dölf see Adolf envelope of letter to Anna, 34
Doolittle, H., xiv, 63 “general methodology”, 87
Dora analysis, 90, 98, 107 “hardhearted”, 91
in Anna’s diary, 6, 58–59, 107 “human conditions”, 91
Dorsey, J. M., x, 63, 88, 93 laboratory-like situation, 91
dream(s), 3, 5–10, 13–17, 21–26, 58–59 letter from, 35–36
extreme, 20–21 “pessimistic view”, 94
of chessboard, 59–61 “recommendations”, 88
Dupont, J., 94 therapeutic intervention, 89
work of, 62–67, 104–105
Edmunds, L., 95 Freud’s Psycho-Analytic Procedure, 90
ego, 21 Freudian fantasies, 111
INDEX 115
Gardiner, M., 88 International Psychoanalytic

Gay, P., 89 Congress in Den Haag, 72
Goldmann, S., 89, 95 interpretation, 63–64
gonococci, 19, 109 reconstructive, 63
Grinker, R., 88 Interpretation of Dreams, The, xx, 62,
Groddeck, G., 77, 93 107
group psychology, 76
Group Psychology and the Analysis of Joie de Vivre, 92
the Ego, 75 Jones, E., 54, 76, 79, 89, 94
Guggenbühl, A., x, 33, 37, 73, 75–76, Josef, F., 73
78–80, 82–83 Jung, C. G., viii, 26, 94
aged 3 years, 44
aged 6 years, 45 Kardiner, A., x, xii, xiv, 63, 88, 92–93
arrived in Vienna in March 1921, Klein, Melanie, 105, 110
72–73 Kleinian theory, 106
biographical details, 53–55 Koellreuter, A., x, xii–xiii, xix, 51, 84,
cover of first diary, 38 97, 104
envelope of letter from Freud Kraus, K., 73
to, 34 Kriser, R., 8
first diary, 38–43 Kun, B., 73
grandfather of, 50 Kurt Eissler Interview, 95
in Paris, 47
letter from Freud, 35–36 La Ronde, xxi, 79–82, 84–85
mother of, 49 Laplanche, J., 63, 65–66
guilty conscience, 11 Last Days of Mankind, The, 73
Leitner, M., 98
haemorrhoids, 12, 109 Leo Baeck Institute, xix
Hauch, G., 71, 74, 78 Leporello’s aria, 20, 43, 62, 80
Haynal, A., xiii–xiv, 97–98 Lévy-Freund, K., 88
Helen (Anna’s sister-in-law), 4–6, 16, libido, 19, 21, 65, 75
88, 95, 110 Liebknecht, K., 73
Hirst, Albert, 89, 91 “Little Hans”, 95
Hofer, K. P., 1 Luxemburg, R., 73
hollowed-out transference, 65 Lynn, D. B., 89, 91
Holy Ghost, 23
homesick, 7 Mahler, Gustav, 96
humanistic education, 12 Margrit (Anna’s cousin), 8–9, 13,
15–16, 60
infantile-sexual level, 63 marriage, 9, 11, 28, 51, 55, 60, 72,
infantile sexual life, 65 78–79, 106
infatuation, 12, 61 masculine symbol, 4
intellectual willingness, 7 masculinity complex, 16–17, 22
intercourse, 15 masturbation, 1, 10, 15, 20
116 INDEX
Matura, 8, 27 revenge, 2, 57
Max Eitingon’s “analysis”, 96 Richard, 3–4, 6, 8, 13, 15–16, 19, 23,
May, U., 26, 54, 67, 74, 79, 83, 89, 96 105
memory, 1, 56, 64, 104, 107 Rickman, J., 92
mental material, 5 Roazen, P., x, 28, 66, 88–89, 95–96, 98
metapsychology, 110 Rossi, G, xix
Rudnytsky, Peter L., 98
nakedness, 14–15 “rule” of abstinence, 96
National Assembly, 78
neurosis, 4, 13, 79 Scheidegger, A., xxi, 16
neurotic anxiety, 75 schizoid, 4
non-patriarchal social order, 74 schizophrenic, 3–4
“nuts”, 94 Schnitzler, A., 3, 58, 79–82
Schur, M., 94
Obholzer, K., 88 scientific education, 12
Oedipus complex, 106 Seeker of Souls, The, 77
Österreichischer Volkswirt, 74 Seipel, Ignaz, 81
self-deprecation, 109
Pálos, Gizella, 91 sexual-infantile transference, 66
penis, 13, 15, 21, 23 sexual inhibition, 94
Pfister, O., 51–52, 55–56, 66, 90, 95 Shepherd’s Pipe, The, 80, 106
Pfoser, A., 73, 81 social anxiety, 75
Pfoser-Schewig, K., 73, 81 Sogar Theater, xxii
Pohlen, M., x, 55, 63, 66, 88 Sounding of the Flute, 79–80
practical soul, 22 steam fly, 22–23
premature birth, 13 Stekel, W., 56
“primal analyses” of hysteria, 110 Stern, A., 88
prostitute, 16 stocking, 3–4
psyche, 5 Strachey, James, 92
psychoanalysis, 89 Swiss Psycho-Analytical Society, 77
anti-hermeneutics, 63 symbols, 9, 19
practices, 111 symbolism, 63
techniques, 111
punishment, 8 Tanco-Duque, R., 87
for embrace, 22 Tandler, J., 72
Target, M., 111
Rank, O., 56, 64–65 Teslin, E., 72
“Rat Man”, 91 threat, 10, 60
reconstructive interpretation, 63 Three Essays on the Theory of Sexuality,
“Red Vienna”, 72, 78 56
Renner, G., 73, 81 Tögel, C., 54, 89
resurrection, 18 Tolstoy, L., 29
INDEX 117
training analysis, 96 Vienna Psychoanalytic Society, 72

transference, 12, 63, 90 see also Vienna Youth Movement, 76
countertransference Vogel, H., xix
empty, 65 völkisch, 81
erotic, 61–62 von Freund, A., 72
Ferenczi and Rank approach, 65
filled-in, 66 Walter, (Anna’s brother), 2–3, 14, 33,
hollowed-out, 65–66 45, 88–89
re-experience in, 65 water nymph, 14
sexual-infantile, 66 Weiss, E., 94
transference object, 66 Wieser, A., 28
transferential space, 66 Winnicott, D. W., 87
Turnheim, M., 64 World of Yesterday, 76, 78
typical novelistic object-symbol, 80 Wortis, J., x, 63, 68, 88
unconscious, 2, 6, 8, 17 Young-Bruehl, E., 28

surrendering to, 24
Zielgehemmte, 75
Vaillant, G. E., 89 Zweig, S., 76, 78
Verband nationalgesinnter Soldaten, 81

What Is This Professor Freud Like - Koellreuter

Uploaded by

Copyright:

Available Formats

What Is This Professor Freud Like - Koellreuter

Uploaded by

Document Information

Original Title

Copyright

Available Formats

Share this document

Share or Embed Document

Sharing Options

Did you find this document useful?

Is this content inappropriate?

Copyright:

Available Formats

What Is This Professor Freud Like - Koellreuter

Uploaded by

Copyright:

Available Formats

KOELLREUTER

WHAT IS THIS PROFESSOR FREUD LIKE?

‘Anna Koellreuter paints a moving portrait of a beloved grandmother and of Freud

ANNA KOELLREUTER is a psychoanalyst and clinical psychologist, and a member Edited by

www.routledge.com 9 781782 204145

First published 2016 by Karnac Books Ltd.

Published 2018 by Routledge

Routledge is an imprint of the Taylor & Francis Group, an informa business

Copyright © 2009, 2010 Psychosozial-Verlag, Giessen,

British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data

A C.I.P. for this book is available from the British Library

ISBN-13: 9781782204145 (pbk)

Typeset by V Publishing Solutions Pvt Ltd., Chennai, India

ABOUT THE EDITOR AND CONTRIBUTORS vii

SERIES EDITOR’S FOREWORD ix

Ernst Falzeder, PhD, is a senior research fellow at University College

André E. Haynal, MD, is a psychoanalyst, a former president of the

by the initial “G.”, had travelled from Switzerland to undertake

Throughout the diary, we obtain a rich glimpse into the nature

represent a piece of transference to Freud, the elderly, omniscient man,

with beautiful photographs of her family, as well as a reproduction of

Professor Brett Kahr.

Kardiner, Abram (1977). My Analysis with Freud: Reminiscences. New York:

The story of the diary

a psychoanalyst. I cannot and do not want to treat my grandmother as

While the contributions generated by this approach were as exciting

lead his analysand’s associations in his favoured direction, instead of

Diary of an analysis, April 1921*

* Translation: Ernst Falzeder and Kristina Pia Hofer.

conversation, looked at the horses, I thought: Now he is obstructed.10

“Did you think it might bring her bad luck?”

To my dismay, I was quite satisfied in Paris that Helen was not as

When I sprained my knee, I thought: It is like with my brother, who

Fr: The many friends

Carnival my mother bakes/delicious little cakes./But then my dad

When resistances arise in the analysis you behave in a similar way

At Burghölzli36 there was a girl

Fr: Aha a Swiss national diagnosis!

When Goethe was pretty39 old he wanted to marry a girl.40 In the

Yesterday I went to a café with a Hungarian, who left the boarding

Fr: And who might this unknown man be?

psychoanalysis I am also telling everything, and in any case I’ve given

A different dream: I am meeting Gertrud Birnstiel51, I am in foreign

Mitesser.58—Vermin is the symbol for children.

Today I am dancing in front of the mirror as I did as a child because I

him I have an uncomfortable feeling and I believe Adolf says: When he

The steam fly is a child, namely—“From Heaven Above to Earth I

Fr: Duplication often indicates castration.

13. Psychanalyse (instead of Psychoanalyse) in the original, which at the time

80. In German, du (“you”) is used as a form of address for friends, family,

1a. The envelope of the letter from Freud to Anna Guggenbühl,

1b. Letter from Freud—page 1.

1c. Letter from Freud—page 2.

2. Anna Guggenbühl, in the year of her analysis with Freud in Vienna.

3. Cover of the first diary.

5. Diary I, page 31, Goethe.

6. Diary 1, page 32, Chlorophyll.

7. Diary II, page 2, sculptur.

8. Diary II, page 3 Leporello.