Editing Sigmund Freud (section)

===Relationship with Fliess===
{{see also|Metapsychology#Freud and the als ob problem}}
During the formative period of his work, Freud valued and came to rely on the intellectual and emotional support of his friend [[Wilhelm Fliess]], a Berlin-based ear, nose, and throat specialist whom he had first met in 1887. Both men saw themselves as isolated from the prevailing clinical and theoretical mainstream because of their ambitions to develop radical new theories of sexuality. Fliess developed highly eccentric theories of human [[Biorhythm (pseudoscience)|biorhythm]]s and a nasogenital connection which are today considered pseudoscientific.<ref>{{cite book|author=Luis A. Cordón|title=Freud's World: An Encyclopedia of His Life and Times: An Encyclopedia of His Life and Times|url=https://books.google.com/books?id=cZyqvspI__QC&pg=PA125|date=8 May 2012|publisher=ABC-CLIO|isbn=978-0-313-08441-6|pages=125–}}</ref> He shared Freud's views on the importance of certain aspects of sexuality – [[masturbation]], [[coitus interruptus]], and the use of [[condoms]] – in the etiology of what was then called the "actual neuroses," primarily [[neurasthenia]] and certain physically manifested anxiety symptoms.<ref name="massonee">{{Cite book |last=Masson |first=Jeffrey Moussaieff |url=https://books.google.com/books?id=jDkkSLkjdJ8C |title=The Assault on Truth |publisher=Untreed Reads |year=2012 |isbn=978-1-61187-280-4 |page=[https://books.google.com/books?id=jDkkSLkjdJ8C&pg=PT18 18] |author-link=Jeffrey Moussaieff Masson |orig-year=1984}}</ref> They maintained an extensive correspondence from which Freud drew on Fliess's speculations on infantile sexuality and bisexuality to elaborate and revise his own ideas. His first attempt at a systematic theory of the mind, his ''Project for a Scientific Psychology'', was developed as a [[metapsychology]] with Fliess as interlocutor.<ref>Kris, Ernst, Introduction to ''Sigmund Freud The Origins of Psychoanalysis. Letters to Wilhelm Fliess, Drafts and Notes 1887–1902''. Eds. Marie Bonaparte, Anna Freud, Ernst Kris, E. London: Imago 1954.</ref> However, Freud's efforts to build a bridge between neurology and psychology were eventually abandoned after they had reached an impasse, as his letters to Fliess reveal,<ref>{{Cite book |last=Reeder |first=Jurgen |url=https://books.google.com/books?id=38_kz3n4bbEC |title=Reflecting Psychoanalysis. Narrative and Resolve in the Psychoanalytic Experience |publisher=Karnac Books |year=2002 |isbn=978-1-78049-710-5 |location=London |page=[https://books.google.com/books?id=38_kz3n4bbEC&pg=PA10 10]}}</ref> though some ideas of the ''Project'' were to be taken up again in the concluding chapter of ''The Interpretation of Dreams''.<ref>Mannoni, Octave, ''Freud: The Theory of the Unconscious'', London: Verso 2015, pp. 40–41.</ref>

Freud had Fliess repeatedly operate on his nose and sinuses to treat "nasal reflex neurosis",<ref name="Sulloway1992">Sulloway 1992 [1979], pp. 142ff.</ref> and subsequently referred his patient [[Emma Eckstein]] to him. According to Freud, her history of symptoms included severe leg pains with consequent restricted mobility, as well as stomach and menstrual pains. These pains were, according to Fliess's theories, caused by habitual masturbation which, as the tissue of the nose and genitalia were linked, was curable by removal of part of the [[Middle nasal concha|middle turbinate]].<ref name="Masson">Masson, Jeffrey M. (1984) ''The Assault on Truth. Freud's Suppression of the Seduction Theory''. New York City: Farrar, Straus and Giroux,</ref><ref>Bonomi, Carlos (2015) ''The Cut and the Building of Psychoanalysis, Volume I: Sigmund Freud and Emma Eckstein''. London: Routledge, p. 80.</ref> Fliess's surgery proved disastrous, resulting in profuse, recurrent nasal bleeding; he had left a half-metre of gauze in Eckstein's nasal cavity whose subsequent removal left her permanently disfigured. At first, though aware of Fliess's culpability and regarding the remedial surgery in horror, Freud could bring himself only to intimate delicately in his correspondence with Fliess the nature of his disastrous role, and in subsequent letters maintained a tactful silence on the matter or else returned to the face-saving topic of Eckstein's hysteria. Freud ultimately, in light of Eckstein's history of adolescent self-cutting and irregular nasal (and menstrual) bleeding, concluded that Fliess was "completely without blame", as Eckstein's post-operative haemorrhages were hysterical "wish-bleedings" linked to "an old wish to be loved in her illness" and triggered as a means of "rearousing [Freud's] affection". Eckstein nonetheless continued her analysis with Freud. She was restored to full mobility and went on to practice psychoanalysis herself.<ref>Gay 2006, pp. 84–87, 154–56.</ref><ref>Schur, Max. "Some Additional 'Day Residues' of the Specimen Dream of Psychoanalysis." In ''Psychoanalysis, A General Psychology'', ed. R.M. Loewenstein et al. New York: International Universities Press, 1966, pp. 45–95.</ref><ref name=Masson/>

Freud, who had called Fliess "the [[Kepler]] of biology", later concluded that a combination of a homoerotic attachment and the residue of his "specifically Jewish mysticism" lay behind his loyalty to his Jewish friend and his consequent overestimation of both his theoretical and clinical work. Their friendship came to an acrimonious end with Fliess angry at Freud's unwillingness to endorse his general theory of sexual periodicity and accusing him of collusion in the plagiarism of his work. After Fliess failed to respond to Freud's offer of collaboration over the publication of his ''Three Essays on the Theory of Sexuality'' in 1906, their relationship came to an end.<ref>Gay 2006, pp. 154–56.</ref>