ABSTRACT
Throughout Sigmund Freud’s letters to Edoardo Weiss about patients, a moralistic tone appears, even though it may seem out of keeping with what one now thinks of in connection with an analyst’s so-called neutrality. Freud had his decided human preferences, and the particular moralism that shows up in the letters to Weiss was a typical aspect of Freud’s own characteristic clinical approach as a whole. In the context of all the authoritarian clinical practices of his own day, Freud can fairly be considered unusually tolerant. Dr. Veneziani was also homosexual, and had expressed anti-Semitic thoughts to Freud, which Freud had “resented and showed it” in the analysis. Freud was alluding to a moderate in the French Revolution, Honoré Gabriel Riquetti Mirabeau. Freud thought that since Dr. Veneziani’s conflicts were not internalized but between the instincts and society he was not analyzable. Freud could be notably encouraging and supportive to Weiss’s clinical efforts.
