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I have repeatedly attempted - most recently in my Autobiographical Study (1925d), in Grote’s series, Die Medizin der Gegenwart - to define my share in the Studies which we published jointly. My merit lay chiefly in reviving in Breuer an interest which seemed to have become extinct, and in then urging him on to publication. A kind of reserve which was characteristic of him, an inner modesty, surprising in a man of such a brilliant personality, had led him to keep his astonishing discovery secret for so long that not all of it was any longer new. I found reason later to suppose that a purely emotional factor, too, had given him an aversion to further work on the elucidation of the neuroses. He had come up against something that is never absent - his patient’s transference on to her physician, and he had not grasped the impersonal nature of the process. At the time when he submitted to my influence and was preparing the Studies for publication, his judgement of their significance seemed to be confirmed. I believe’, he told me, ‘that this is the most important thing we two have to give the world.’

Besides the case history of his first patient Breuer contributed a theoretical paper to the Studies. It is very far from being out of date; on the contrary, it conceals thoughts and suggestions which have even now not been turned to sufficient account. Anyone immersing himself in this speculative essay will form a true impression of the mental build of this man, whose scientific interests were, alas, turned in the direction of our psychopathology during only one short episode of his long life.