ABSTRACT
Scientifically, I am in a bad way; namely, caught up in 'The Psychology for Neurologists', which regularly consumes me totally until, actually overworked, I must break off. I have never before experienced such a high degree of preoccupation. (Masson 1985: letter from Freud to Fliess, 27th April, 1895)
...a man like me cannot live without a hobbyhorse, without a consuming passion, without—in Schiller's words—a tyrant. I have found one. In its service I know no limits. It is psychology... I am tormented by two aims: to examine what shape the theory of mental functioning takes if one introduces quantitative considerations, a sort of economics of nerve forces, and, second, to peel off from psychopathology a gain for normal psychology. (Masson 1985: letter dated 25th May, 1895)
Reporting on it now would be like sending a six-month foetus of a girl to a ball. (Masson 1985: letter dated 12th June, 1895)