FREUD SIGMUND: (1856-1939) Austrian Neurologist, the father of Psychoanalysis. A fine A.L.S., Freud,

FREUD SIGMUND: (1856-1939) Austrian Neurologist, the father of Psychoanalysis. A fine A.L.S., Freud,

‘the imagination of a very intelligent mental patient’

FREUD SIGMUND: (1856-1939) Austrian Neurologist, the father of Psychoanalysis. A fine A.L.S., Freud, one page, large 4to, Vienna, 16th March 1934, to a Director, in German. Freud informs his correspondent that the work of Hans Sperber Uber den Einfluss sexueller Momente auf Enstehung und Entwicklung der Sprache ('On the influence of Sexual Moments on the Origin and Development of Language') was published in 1912 in the first volume of the periodical Imago, and remarks 'Most likely special copies of this article don't exist but I think if you contact the ''Internat. Psychoanalytischen Verlag'' (Vienna I….) you can get the copy or the periodical'. Freud further writes that 'The ''Grundsprache'' [basic language] of which I will talk below, is the imagination of a very intelligent mental patient [Schreber], whose autobiography provided me with the content for a study [''Vier psychoanalyt. Krankengeschichten''] ('Four psychoanalytical Case Histories, 1932). This article was translated in the ''Revue Française de Psychoanalyse'' V. No 1, 1932 (Denoel et Steele, Editeurs, Paris'. A letter of interesting content. Some light age wear and minor creasing, largely to the edges, and a few small, neat splits at the edges of the folds, a few neatly repaired to the verso. About VG Hans Sperber (1885-1963) German linguist. Early in his career Sperber worked in the vicinity of Freud and this influenced his main research interests which lay in the history of language and the theory or psychology of language. Sperber's article On the influence of Sexual Moments on the Origin and Development of Language, as referred to in Freud's letter, was indeed published in Imago, the psychoanalytic journal founded by Freud, and advocates the thesis that 'the original words all denoted sexual things and then lost that sexual meaning by moving on to other things and activities that were compared to the sexual ones'.