LITMIR.BIZ

      PREFACE

       by

      EMIL A. GUTHEIL, M.D.

      WHEN AFTER Wilhelm Stekel’s death, his wife, Mrs. Hilda Stekel, bestowed upon me the honor of editing his Autobiography, I soon realized what she meant when she intimated that the manuscript had been written in unusual haste. Much of the material was disorganized. Nevertheless, to one who had long been versed in the distinguished psychologist’s method and who was familiar with many of the details of his personal life, the dramatic force and beauty of his story was consistently apparent.

      Wilhelm Stekel was a pioneering psychoanalyst whose prodigious intuition and medical skill had permitted him to compile, study, and interpret the case histories of thousands of patients. When he felt that the sands of his life were running low, he wanted to leave his own “case history” to posterity, particularly to the coming generations of psychotherapists. He was in a hurry. Cataclysmic World War II events were besetting him; a grave illness he well understood was hewing at his gaunt, proud figure. Calmly, but with intense speed, he prepared his record.

      There is no doubt that in his decision to write his autobiography Stekel was influenced by Jean Jacques Rousseau’s Confessions. He had always deplored the fact that in world literature only a few autobiographies were sufficiently intimate and frank for the analyst-reader to evaluate the personality of the author involved. Stekel admired the rare courage and brilliant insight of the French philosopher so much that he made a thought-provoking psychological analysis of Rousseau’s personality through his writings.¹

      Stekel hoped that his own autobiography would be used in a similar way as a source for analytic research. As a brain specialist might will his own brain to medical investigators, so did the author of the ten-volume work on Disorders of the Instincts and Emotions wish to leave the account of his own instincts and emotions for the benefit of the students of psychoanalysis.

      Such was the way of the real Stekel. When the great teacher and practitioner was no longer able to instruct in lecture halls or clinics, when he could no longer introduce live patients to demonstrate the intricacies of psychotherapy, he took the one available subject—himself—and posed it in the nude, stripped of every conventional reserve.

      In his account of himself Stekel tried hard to be unbiased; however, his success in this respect was little more than that of some of his own patients who submitted prepared

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