“My unrest reached its highest point when my father came to Berlin to see me and I lived in Charlottenburg. I had a formidable anxiety about meeting him and so it happened that he was mostly alone and saw me but seldom. He did prevail upon me to see a specialist who promptly put me in a sanitarium. While there I was much more quiet, but only outwardly. Within me the old struggle kept on as usual. The physician ordered me to give up women for a time because I was super-excitable and indulgence would harm me. I was abstinent for a few weeks but thoughts troubled me every night and I was plainly afraid of losing my mind. Then I turned to my old remedy, onanism. I did this in spite of the fact that the physician and the specialist both declared that my condition was due to excessive masturbation. I was torn between conflicting thoughts at the time but noticed that I became more quiet after masturbating. At any rate after three months of sanitarium treatment I was still in no condition to work. I am depressed and life loses its zest the moment I turn to work. After the first few minutes my mind turns to women and I must interrupt whatever I am doing and run into the street. Leaving the sanitarium I returned to Vienna where the old vicious cycle began once more. I made the round of physicians and was given any quantity of bromides. Neither the medicines nor the various hydrotherapic courses helped me in any way. Only if I have intercourse about three times during the night do I feel a little quieted down in the morning. Then I am a little more alert and can work for a short while. But already on the following day, usually the first thing in the morning, the old trouble reasserts itself. I am irritable and depressed. After a coitus which does not gratify me I feel worse than ever. Then I am tremendously excited and want right away another woman who might satisfy me better. Sometimes I long for true love and for the companionship of a lovely being. I then feel the terror of loneliness fastening upon me. I literally pant for air and again rush to the street where temptations meet me. I feel as if something within me has taken possession of my soul driving me on from one adventure to another. Personally I am inwardly inclined towards everything that is noble; but something within me compels me to act as a bad and evil person. “I believe I am like a man who is the victim of an insatiable hunger. I have often thought of poor Prometheus, condemned always to linger in hunger and thirst. In the same way I feel within me an unquenchable thirst for love and its pleasures and I have no other thought than to satisfy this thirst in some way. I feel like a mechanism destined only to serve the penis in its demand for gratification.