Images of freud: From his correspondence

Abstract

The study of the epistolary activity of Freud, because of the specific investment demonstrated by the estimated 20,000 letters which make up his correspondence, in itself affords us various insights: on Freud himself, describing himself from day to day, on the history and nature of the conscious and unconscious libidinal relationships which linked him to his principal correspondents and, taking this exceptional case as our starting point, on the specificity of the need to write and to receive letters which is present to differing degrees in every human being. Leaving to others the detailed investigation of the content of this correspondence as a source of biographical or theoretical information, this work concentrates on the comments by Freud himself on the many different aspects of the art of the letter-writer. The method used was specific: some 600 extracts from his letters were read, whereby we confined ourselves to remarks on the material circumstances in which they were written, the handwriting, the detailed records which were kept of them, their frequency, their family or conventional aspects, etc. This intentionally limited vision allows us to isolate a number of points of reference in the manifestations of a compulsion to write intended to prevent the occurrence, already feared by the young Freud of age 18 years, of “mortal boredom”.