Sigmund Freud har kommet for sent til sin fars begravelse, føler seg uglesett i legemiljøet og Wien, og analyserer sin egen drøm om faren, som han sørger tungt over

Sigmund Freud skriver til sin venn Wilhelm Fliess i Berlin (her gjengitt i engelsk oversettelse -- originalen er på tysk):

"By one of those dark pathways behind the official consciousness the old man's death has affected me deeply. I valued him highly, understood him very well, and with his peculiar mixture of deep wisdom and fantastic lightheartedness he had a significant effect on my life [].

By the time he died, his life had long been over, but in [my] inner self the whole past has been awakened by this event. I now feel quite uprooted.

Otherwise, I am writing about infantile paralyses (Pegasus yoked) and am enjoying my four cases and especially look forward to the prospect of talking to you for several hours. Lonely, that is understood. Perhaps I shall tell you a few small wild things in return for your marvellous ideas and findings.

Less enjoyable is the state of my practice, on which my mood always remains dependent. With heart and nose I am satisfied again. Recently I heard the first reaction to my incursion into psychoatry. From it I quote: "Gruesome, horrible, old wives' psychiatry." That was Rieger in Wurzburg. And, of all things, about paranoia, which has become so transparent!

Your book is still keeping us waiting. Wernicke recently referred a patient to me, a lieutenant who is in the officers' hospital.

I must tell you about a nice dream I had the night after the funeral. I was in a place where I read a sign: You are requested to close the eyes. I immediately recognized the location as the barbershop I visit every day. On the day of the funeral I was kept waiting and therefore arrived a little late at the house of mourning. At that time my family was displeased with me because I had arranged for the funeral to be quiet and simple, which they later agreed was quite justified. They were also somewhat offended by my lateness. The sentence on the sign has a double meaning: one should do one’s duty to the dead (an apology as though I had not done it and were in need of leniency), and the actual duty itself. The dream thus stems from the inclination to self-reproach that regularly sets in among the survivors ."