Freud, Sigmund | A selection of correspondence between Freud and an important American analyst

Freud, Sigmund

Two autograph letters to Dr. Isador Coriat, [with] several letters from Coriat

Correspondence between Sigmund Freud and Isador Coriat, including two letters signed by Freud. Ten typed letters (various sizes, though mostly 230 mm x 148 mm, 280 x 215 mm) on single leaves, two letters on Freud's stationary; minor toning, a few marginal closed tears and creases, old horizontal folds. One of Freud's letters in German, with translation, and another in English. Eight letters from Coriat [with] one photographic portrait, and one printed article on bifolia.

A lovely collection of letters "from a student" to "the master"

In a letter to Freud, Coriat proposes a new psychoanalytic concept, for which he desires the technical term, a "neutralizing mechanism," to explain a "certain mechanism in dreams," which allows the mind "to overcome anxiety [in the dream] or render it inert and thus [...] go on sleeping peacefully". Coriat then analyzes his dreams as examples of this phenomenon. The translation of Freud's letter in German shows him dismissing this proposal, stating: "I feel that the words 'neutralize' etc., are not to be used in a descriptive sense. I do not believe that there is any advantage in distinguishing a particular 'neutralizing mechanism'. On the contrary, we are in danger, it [sic] we use this title or name, that the whole dynamic and topographical sense will be made different." Freud then goes on to illuminate Coriat's own dream without the use of this concept.

Freud's second letter is a note of congratulations upon Coriat's appointment as the president of the American Psychoanalytic Association. The remainder of the correspondence are letters from Coriat, including his well wishes upon Freud's 70th birthday, plans to meet in Vienna, a portrait of himself, a letter presenting his book Repressed Emotions, among other notes.

Isador Coriat was a psychiatrist, neurologist, and one of the first American psychoanalysts. He wrote extensively on repression, dream analysis, abnormal psychology, and the nature of psychoanalysis. He was one of the founders of the Boston Psychoanalytic Society and twice the president of the American Psychoanalytic Society.