This article describes a little-known case treated by Freud, known as the AB Case, about which the correspondence between him and Pfister gives us some fragmentary information. The letters these friends exchanged between 1924 and 1927 discuss Pfister's referral of the young patient to Freud, the difficult treatment involved and Freud's suffering during the process. The article associates the advances and setbacks in this complex case, related to Freud's personal difficulties at the time as well as with advances in psychoanalysis and with the social and political events of the period. Patients like AB, who show narcissistic and schizoid traits, still continue to arrive at analysts' offices today.
AB case; correspondence between Freud & Pfister; history of psychoanalysis; narcissistic and schizoid personalities
