Sigmund Freud and Martin Pappenheim

Abstract

During World War I, Martin Pappenheim, as a young doctor in the field of neurology and psychiatry, studied various possible consequences of war traumas, perhaps as part of a wider project of the Austro-Hungarian monarchy's army. He visited military hospitals, sanatoriums and prisons, and between February and June 1916, while residing in Terezin, he had several opportunities to talk with Gavrilo Princip, who was imprisoned there. Princip was a young Bosnian Serb who had assassinated Archduke Franz Ferdinand of Austria and his wife, Sophie, in Sarajevo on 28 June 1914. There is written evidence of Pappenheim's conversations with Princip; they were first published in Vienna 1926. My article is concerned with the possibility of Pappenheim's influence on the later development of Freud's theory.