Main description:

Sigmund Freud and The Forsyth Case uses newly discovered primary sources to investigate one of Sigmund Freud's most mysterious clinical experiences, the Forsyth case. The book details Pierri's attempts to recover the lost original case notes which are published here for the first time, to identify the patient involved and to set the case into the broader frame of Freud's work.

Maria Pierri begins with a preliminary illustration of the case, its historical context, and how it connects to Freud's interests in 'thought-transmission', or telepathy. The author illustrates the possibility of a psychoanalytic interpretation of the transference and countertransference elements potentially conveyed by certain 'magical' coincidences during the analysis, introducing the reader to a psychopathology of everyday life of the setting. The book also explores Freud's further investigations into thought-transmission, focusing on a meeting of the Secret Committee in October 1919 and his clinical work with his own daughter Anna.

Sigmund Freud and The Forsyth Case features supplementary historical materials adding valuable insight to the context and meaning of the case. It will be essential reading for psychoanalysts in practice and in training, as well as academics and scholars of psychoanalytic studies, spirituality and the history of psychology. It is complemented by Occultism and the Origins of Psychoanalysis: Freud, Ferenczi and the Challenge of Thought Transference.

Contents:

Prologue: Telepathy, superstitions and mushrooms

1. Coincidences of the psychoanalytic setting: a strange home visit

M. de Fortgibu and his plum pudding

The maternal in the circumstances of the setting: the psychoanalytic clock.

"All things are chained, knotted, in love..."

Coincidences in analysis

Notable examples: From Carl G. Jung; Eugenio Gaddini; Jose Bleger; Joyce McDougall

Telepathy, an enlightening mistake.

Freud and the "Forsyth case"

2. Forsyth arrives in Vienna to undertake a seven-week analysis with Prof Freud

The Decline of the West

Introduction to Psycho-Analysis: the first twenty-eight Lectures

Hunger in Vienna

Parcels from England

A passage to Austria

A moment of forgetfulness by Freud

3. Herr P. ends his analysis with Prof. Freud in a rather extraordinary way

New introductory Lectures on Psychoanalysis

The "Forsyth case"

Solve et coagula

The Postscript of a Preface

4. The Duellists

Meeting in Zurich

The duellists

The first training analysis in Budapest

Forsyth, the pediatrician "once a friend of mine."

5. Nachtraglichkeit: Following the traces of a long deferral

Freud becomes a heretic: the debate about the "transmission of thought" within the Committee

A mistake by Freud

The memorable Harzreise

1921, an essay in two halves: Vorbericht-Preface, Nachtrag-Postscript

1922, Dreams and Telepathy

Perplexities, second thoughts and experiments with Ferenczi and Anna

1925, section C: "The Occult Significance of Dreams"

Still playing for time

1933, Lecture XXX, "Dream and Occultism"

The gold coin

6. The disappeared-occulted manuscript

The posthumous publication of the Vorbericht (1921) in "Psychoanalysis and Telepathy" (1941) and the disappearance of the Nachtrag

Hide and seek

Back to Freud's secret text: found in translation

7. Sigmund Freud: Postscript (1921)

8. Manuscript details, slips and errors

Conditions and details

Freud's "errors" and the occulted "dritte Fall"

Nachtraglichkeit and reconstructions

9. During the great war

Circumstances

A coming-of-age prematurely interrupted

Freud's forced inactivity: the Metapsychology and the Introductory Lectures

Impotence and death anxiety. Towards the uncanny defeat

Ernest Jones's war

Ferenczi's kisses

10. Coincidences in Vienna: a week of fireworks in autumn 1919

The new orientation towards the West

The heart towards the Est

11. The strange case of Dr. Forsyth and Mr. Vorsicht: the build-up

The "secret language"

The Man of Property

Staging: the Preconscious at work

Correspondences

The Fortsein game: The troublesome individual and a first repression; The missed appointment; The coincidence of the "neighbours"; The joke of the "home visit"; An ambivalent gift

12. The strange case of Dr. Forsyth and Mr. Vorsicht: the session

Vorsicht, Forsyth, Forsyte

The visiting card

The Freud-Freund slip

The Nightmare and Jones monograph on the "Alptraum"

The faulty translations

13. That Forsyte woman

Return to the mothers - Telepathy, "distant proximity"

Don Giovanni: Zitto, mi pare sentire odor di femmina....

14. Retrospective: the lost scene

Caritas Romana: "This is the place, this is the source"

A destiny and a choice made long ago

"Little Freud": a child is being conceived

Me too!

15. A hereditary transmission

A daughter is being analysed

Lou Andreas Salome: a mother-sister

Thought-transmission? A pair of twin papers: The father's text; The daughter's text

"Lifedeath"

"Not to be there": the process of separation and the game of Fortsein

Anna, Antigone

16. 1932 "Dreams and Occultism" and the Confusion of tongues

17. "Herr Vorsicht", alias Paul Bernfeld

"The eldest of a family of eight or nine children"

The firm of Paul Bernfeld and Heinrich Rosenberg, B & R: jokes and repetitions by the preconscious

18 A secret in the "Premise": about the substitute of the Third Case

19. Dr. David Forsyth leaves the scene and the story. Circumstances of the birth of the International Journal of Psychoanalysis

Seven Weeks in Vienna

The Forsyth affaire

Forsyth leaves the scene

20. The Freud's final orientation towards the West: from Vienna to London

"Fortsein": Professor Freud is has "gone" away

Fort-Da. The return: story of a Cap

21. The importance of being Ernest Jones. The cycle closes

Transmission of the tradition and "crypts"

Free associations: memories of a psycho-analyst

Epilogue: A debt to pay

Bibliography