PARTISAN REVIEW
19
wrote to Fliess that he had finished the work the day before and
added, with that terrifying self-confidence of judgment that he
frequently revealed, "Anyhow, it is the most subtle thing I have
yet written and will produce an even more horrifying effect than
usual." The title he had at first given the new work -- " Dreams
and Hysteria" -- suggests the magnitude of ambition that was at
play in him. At the same time, however, Freud's settling of his
account with Dora took on the proportions of a heroic inner and
intellectual enterprise.
Yet that account was still by no means settled, as the obscure
subsequent history of this work dramatically demonstrates .
In
the
first letter of january 25, 1901, Freud had written to Fliess that
the paper had already been accepted by Ziehen, joint editor of the
Monatsschrift fUr Psychiatrie und Neurologie.
On the fifteenth of
February, in another letter to Fliess, he remarks that he is now
finishing up
The Psychopathology of Everyday Ltfe,
and that
when he has done so, he will correct it and the case history. About
two months later, in March 1901, according to Ernest jones,
Freud showed "his notes of the case" to his close friend, Oscar
Rie. The reception Rie gave to them was such, repcrts Freud, that
"I thereupon determined to make no further effort to break down
my state of isolation." On May 8, 1901, Freud wrote to Fliess
that he had not yet "made up his mind" to send off the work. One
month later, he made up his mind and sent if off, announcing to
Fliess that "it will meet the gaze of an astonished public in the
autumn." But nothing of the sort was to occur, and what hap–
pened next was, according to jones, "entirely mysterious" and
remains so. Freud either sent it off to Ziehen, the editor who had
already accepted it, and then having sent it asked for it back. Or
he sent it off to another magazine altogether, the
Journal fur
Psychologie und Neurolog£e,
whose editor, one Brodmann, refused
to publish it. The upshot was that Freud returned the manuscript
to a drawer for four more years. And when he did at last send it
into print, it was in the journal that had accepted it in the first
place.
But we are not out of the darkness and perplexities yet, for
when Freud finally decided in 1905 to publish the case, he revised
the work once again. There is one further touch of puzzlements.
