Books and Manuscripts

Vienna, December 9, 1921. Two-page autograph letter in German, signed by Freud on his personal stationery to Swiss-American psychoanalyst Emil Oberholzer, regarding a colleague, Dr. Blum, and subjects related to analytic fees and treatment. Creasing from when folded. One sheet, 11 3/8 x 8 7/8 in. (289 x 225 mm). In mat with an English translation, as well as a photograph of Freud.

Lot includes a typed letter from the Sigmund Freud Archives regarding this letter, dated January 28, 1970. Signed by secretary and founder Kurt R. Eissler.

"Dear Doctor
My correspondence with my colleague Dr. Blum is already closed. When I answered him that I would probably find time in the spring and that the hour would cost 50 Fr., he wrote that he regretted not to be able to afford that much.

Because you are supporting him so much, I shall gladly return to his case to consider future possibilities. Do tell him that he can get an excellent analysis here with Dr. [Otto] Rank for half of my fee. Perhaps he will settle for that. He should also get in contact with R. at once. I cannot reduce my honorarium for I must use the short time in which I am still able to work to lift myself out of the war-time poverty, and American and English physicians come to me in such great numbers that any reduction of the honorarium for one case would mean a straight sacrifice to me. Unfortunately, I cannot behave altruistically now, especially since I am seriously thinking of reducing the numbers of my working hours in accordance with my age.

Your memoirs for the cover I should very much like to have for the periodical. You appear on the title page and are not at all represented inside. The case will be valuable also for our German readers. It could easily be translated for the English journal, either here or in London. I am counting on it!

With cordial greetings to you and your dear wife,
Yours, Freud

P.S. The one-day disturbance didn't affect any of us."

A fine and revealing autograph letter from Sigmund Freud to Swiss psychoanalyst, Dr. Emil Oberholzer (1883-1958), regarding psychoanalytic fees and Freud's personal post-war finances. Here, Freud regretfully informs Dr. Oberholzer that he cannot reduce his fees to analyze a Dr. Blum (likely Swiss psychoanalyst Dr. Ernst Blum), writing that he "must use the short time in which I am still able to work to lift myself out of the war-time poverty" and that he "cannot behave altruistically now, especially since I am seriously thinking of reducing the numbers of my working hours in accordance with my age." In his place, Freud recommends his fellow psychoanalyst Otto Rank, one of his closest colleagues and then secretary to the Vienna Psychoanalytic Society.

Dr. Emil Oberholzer, along with his wife, Dr. Mira Oberholzer-Gincburg, were leading Swiss psychoanalysts who made major contributions to psychoanalysis and who were critical to its spread in Switzerland, "the first country...in which psychoanalysis met with a broad response” (Weber, 2002, in Loewenberg & Thompson, 100 Years of the IPA..., 2019).

Oberholzer was born in Zweibrücken, Germany, and studied psychiatry under Eugen Bleuler in Zürich. Afterwards he became Bleuler’s assistant at the Burghözli psychiatric hospital in Zurich, where he met his future wife, Mira (1887-1949) (see lot 270). In 1912, Oberholzer traveled to Vienna, where he first met Freud, was analyzed by him, and soon after adopted Freud's ideas for his own practice, becoming one of the earliest practitioners of psychoanalysis. In 1919, Oberholzer and his wife established their own psychoanalytic practice in Zurich. Along with Mira and Swiss pastor Oskar Pfister, he founded the Swiss Medical Society for Psychoanalysis and served as its first president, from 1919 until 1928. A friend and colleague of Dr. Hermann Rorschach, he helped the latter develop his famous and eponymous shape interpretation test, and was instrumental in introducing it in Europe and the United States. With the rise of the Nazis, Oberholzer and his family moved to New York City in 1938, where they established a psychoanalytic practice. In 1941, Oberholzer became a member of the New York Psychoanalytic society.

Dr. Ernst Blum (1892-1981), was a Swiss-born psychoanalyst, neurologist, and psychiatrist. He studied medicine at the University of Zurich, received his doctorate under Nobel prize-winning Swiss physiologist Walter Rudolf Hess, and then trained in psychiatry under Bleuler. Despite Freud's letter here, Blum was analyzed by him the following year, in 1922, and his fiancé, Elsa Alide Sapas, by Otto Rank. Blum worked as a senior physician at the Psychiatric Polyclinic, taught at the University of Bern until 1957, and then opened his own private practice in Bern, until his retirement.