A scientific dialogue between Freud and Fliess. The research project on neurasthenia (1893)

This study, following upon the publication of the letters written by Freud to Fliess, deals with the objective content of the relationship between Freud and Fliess as it appears in a joint research project drawn up in 1893 and that was never carried out. This project had been elaborated with an extensive use of practician's notes in mind, this practice being in accordance with Fliess's habits but contrary to Freud's: this is to be linked with the rivalry existing between practitioners with scientific ambitions and university doctors. One of the principal goals of the project was to establish a nosography of the diffuse clinical picture of "neurasthenia". It was with this aim in mind that Fliess had already published a book on "nasal reflex neurosis" which fully reveals his tendency to establish descriptive classifications; on the contrary, Freud endeavoured--following the principle that form is to be found in typical cases (the "initial cases")--to arrive at an etiological and theoretical understanding of phenomena, an ambition that he also opposed to Fliess. Even if an interest for sexuality could be detected in Fliess's work, it was only under Freud's influence that it became an explicit theme. His role consisted--and this remained valid throughout their relationship--in supplying an organic basis to Freud's theses, the corner-stone of which was a theory of sexuality. He thus aided Freud in ridding himself of his scientific scruples and facilitated the construction of the psychoanalytic theory under its psychological form.