884284

research-article2019
HPY0010.1177/0957154X19884284History of PsychiatryJevremović

Article

History of Psychiatry
2020, Vol. 31(1) 83­–92
Sigmund Freud and © The Author(s) 2019
Article reuse guidelines:
Martin Pappenheim sagepub.com/journals-permissions
DOI: 10.1177/0957154X19884284
https://doi.org/10.1177/0957154X19884284
journals.sagepub.com/home/hpy

Petar Jevremović
University of Belgrade, Serbia

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.

Keywords
Gavrilo Princip, Martin Pappenheim, psychoanalysis, Sigmund Freud

We know who Sigmund Freud was, but who was Martin Pappenheim? There is no easy way to give
a definite answer to this question, although his basic biographical data are well known. Pappenheim
was born on 4 April 1881 in Presburg (today’s Bratislava). He got a degree in medicine and then
studied neurology and psychiatry, developmental psychopathology, specificities of psychopatho­
logy in women, and war neurosis. He published texts, wrote books, and had an undoubtedly suc­
cessful academic career (Pappenheim,1914, 1916, 1922, 1930). He lived in Vienna but left in 1938,
when the Nazis were flourishing, and went to Palestine. He settled in Tel Aviv and worked on
developing psychiatry and psychoanalysis, until his death in 1943 (Roth, 1978).1
Pappenheim knew Freud, and was interested in psychoanalysis, but apparently did not undergo
psychoanalysis. He attended the meetings of the Vienna Psychoanalytic Society, as shown in notes
made by Otto Rank.2 His sister was was Martha Pappenheim, a young medical student who wrote
the libretto for Arnold Schoenberg’s famous opera Erwartung, which was influenced by Freud’s
essays (primarily Studies on Hysteria and Dora). Moreover, Pappenheim’s daughter Elsa (1911–2009),
a respected psychoanalyst in the USA for decades, remarked in some of her interviews near the end

Corresponding author:
Petar Jevremović, Faculty of Philosophy, Department of Psychology, University of Belgrade, 18-20 Čika Ljubina Street,
Belgrade, 11000, Serbia.
Email: pjevremo@f.bg.ac.rs
84 History of Psychiatry 31(1)

of her life on her family’s closeness to Freud, and the (relatively) frequent contacts her parents had
with Freud’s family.
During World War I, Pappenheim, as a young, ambitious doctor in the field of neurology and psy­
chiatry, studied different possible consequences of war traumas, perhaps as part of a wider project of
the Austro-Hungarian monarchy’s army. He visited military hospitals, sanatoria and prisons. He even
published several texts on these subjects. Despite the impressively developed historiography of
World War I – many available texts and monographs, and original, critically edited material – sadly
we do not know whether Pappenheim wrote official reports about everything he did as a mobilized
doctor/researcher. It seems highly probable that he wrote some sort of reports, perhaps for his com­
mander, but nothing has been discovered.
The whole matter gains importance if we bear in mind the following fact: in the period between
February and June 1916, while residing in Terezin, Pappenheim had several opportunities to talk
with Gavrilo Princip, who was imprisoned there. Princip was the young Bosnian Serb who had
assassinated Archduke Franz Ferdinand of Austria and his wife, Sophie, in Sarajevo on 28 June
1914. Moreover, there is written evidence of these conversations. Pappenheim interviewed Princip
at irregular intervals, starting on 19 February 1916, and then on 12 and 18 May and 5 June 1916. It
is unclear why the meetings were on these dates or, indeed, how a young, still unknown psychiatrist
could talk to Princip, who was held under the securest possible prison conditions. He was usually in
chains, alone in the dark; nobody could talk to him and he could not talk to anyone. He was forbid­
den to read and write. Pappenheim, nevertheless, talked to Princip, and even obtained two short
notes from him.3 Pappenheim managed to keep these notes and eventually show them to Ratko
Parežanin, who probably copied them. We do not know how this was possible or whether, for exam­
ple, Pappenheim talked to Čabrinović and Grabež (two other young men also involved in the assas­
sination of Archduke Franz) during his stay in Terezin.
Although we do not have Pappenheim’s original written notes of his conversations with
Princip, we do have a record, which is a transcript of Pappenheim’s original. During his conversa­
tions with Princip, Pappenheim wrote shorthand notes and then made a typewritten transcript. In
1926 Ratko Parežanin4 got the original text from Pappenheim, copied it in the shortest possible
time, and then returned it to him. In the same year, Parežanin published the document, in the origi­
nal German, in Vienna ([Pappenheim and Princip], 1926a) and then in the Serbian language in
Zagreb ([Pappenheim and Princip], 1926b). In both versions, two short handwritten notes by
Princip were published together with the transcript of the notes of Pappenheim’s conversation. In
1927 the same document was translated into English and published by Hamilton Fish Armstrong,
a managing editor of Foreign Affairs, in the journal Current History in New York (Armstrong,
1927). As far as I know, nobody except Parežanin claimed that he possessed the Pappenheim
original, at least not officially. Unfortunately, Pappenheim’s original shorthand notes and his
typescript are lost, and everything written about them is based on the text that Parežanin (and
Pappenheim) published.
Can Parežanin be trusted? Probably not entirely. He was ideological, he knew Princip; he was
involved in politics, and his added comments have traces of his own political stance. Fortunately,
it is easy to identify the comments by the initials R.P. at the end of a preface and a postscript that
he himself (narratively/rhetorically) added to Pappenheim’s text. The overall impression is that
Pappenheim’s quotations of Princip’s words are authentic. Finally, bearing in mind that the text
was published in Vienna (in German) while Pappenheim lived there, and that, as far as I know,
Pappenheim never said anything that would deny the text’s validity, we could say that the text was
indirectly approved by Pappenheim.
The authenticity of Princip’s short notes to Pappenheim, which are occasionally wrongly referred
to in the literature as letters, has not been disputed by anybody.5
Jevremović 85

Pappenheim and Freud

The official historiography of the psychoanalytic movement always omits Martin Pappenheim’s
name, and it is hard to say why almost nobody mentions him. He was a Jew, but surely this was not
the reason; like Freud, he was indifferent to the Zionist aspirations of his time. He was a doctor
(neurologist, psychiatrist), and his academic career was uncontroversial. However, he was close to
left-wing ideas and was actively interested in the events in Russia at that time.6 Moreover, he
lacked the servile mentality prone to cultism that had started to develop in Freud’s small group.7
Whatever the relation of Pappenheim to Freud and the people around him, and whatever people
thought of him, Pappenheim, in his conversations with Princip, acted like a true pupil of Freud.
This is crucial for our story. From a quick look at the subjects Pappenheim was interested in, and
the most probable order of questions aimed at Princip, one can recognize the already standardized
psychoanalytic procedure of obtaining basic information about a patient.
Like his teacher Freud, Pappenheim was interested in the patient’s childhood, his early devel­
opment, the dynamics of family relations, profiles of the key figures in his life, and also in inves­
tigating possible psychical problems, how well he slept and what he dreamt. Pappenheim wrote
down his thoughts about Princip’s character and temperament, his habits and opinions, and the
way he preferred to spend his time. Bearing in mind Pappenheim’s indisputable academic neuro­
logical pedigree, one notices his almost exclusive psychoanalytic structured process of collecting
anamnestic information.
We can assume that the young doctor from Vienna already had more than solid knowledge of
analytic theory by the time he visited Terezin. This is particularly true of the first drive theory,
which achieved its final form in the period before World War I. From the text preserved by
Parežanin, it is hard to say how Pappenheim tackled the theory of narcissism, which for Freud was
still valid. In any case, one gets the impression that Pappenheim, during his conversations with
Princip, finally held to the more famous drive theory rather than the (more hermetic and unfin­
ished) theory of narcissism. Without doubt, Pappenheim had direct contact with Freud and belonged
to a relatively wide circle of Freud’s pupils and admirers. This allowed him to be in close contact
with Freud’s already finalized views, but Pappenheim was not, like Ferenczi, so close that Freud
told him about his current interests. However, it should be stressed that Pappenheim obviously had
quite a professional relationship with Ferenczi himself. This is confirmed by some elements of
their correspondence, which has been preserved but not yet published. Furthermore, in the archive
of the Freud Museum in London, there is an unpublished letter from Pappenheim to Freud, sent on
5 May 1931.8 So it seems that Pappenheim maintained contact with Freud in the years after the
interview with Princip, and after Parežanin published the transcript of the text of the conversations
in Vienna.
During his interview with Princip, it was obvious that Pappenheim consistently held to what he
had learned from Freud, although it is debatable where this led him. As a young doctor, he was
obviously privileged to talk to one of the most famous – and, to some extent, probably the most
notorious – convicts in the whole Austro-Hungarian Empire; this must have been quite a challenge
for the young doctor. At the same time, the encounter with Princip could surely be viewed as a
challenge for psychoanalytic theory. If we study the text preserved by Parežanin, we can see how
Pappenheim handled the role in which he found himself. Moreover, the transcript shows us how
psychoanalytic theory of the time, regardless of its particular representative (Martin Pappenheim),
proved itself – or did not – in the encounter with Princip.
Assassinating the Archduke meant for Austria-Hungary much more that just the murder of some
mortal; Princip actually aimed his bullets at and hit the very symbol of the monarchy, namely the
future heir to the throne. Moreover, it is ironic that Ferdinand used to say angrily: ‘Das ist Prinzip!’,
86 History of Psychiatry 31(1)

whenever someone confronted him (Milenković, 1914/2014: 59). For the psychoanalysis of this
time, killing a monarch or crown prince had to be put in the context of the already normative
Oedipal theory. The prime subjects of classical psychoanalysis (which were obviously known to
Pappenheim) were: mythical tragicism of killing the father; incest and the conflicting nature of
desire; oneiric symbolism of the unconscious; the libido theory; and the (ontological) confronta­
tion. Pappenheim knew Freud’s essay ‘Totem and taboo’ (Freud, 1913/2001a), and he followed this
approach towards Princip.
Princip’s German was crude and unrefined; his physical state was tragic. The inhuman treat­
ment to which he was exposed, and the horrible conditions in which he lived, had left a mark. He
was only a pale shadow of his former self, a living corpse deprived of his right to a dignified death.
What was his personal anamnesis? This is where trouble started for Pappenheim. Princip’s
responses deviated significantly from those expected according to the psychoanalytic theories of
the time, especially regarding his father. In contrast to the father described in Freud’s ‘Totem and
taboo’, Princip’s father was a calm man, not interested in fights and drinking, or politics, and he
displayed nothing that could seem castrating (threatening, frustrating) towards his sons. Princip did
not talk much about his mother. We discover from Pappenheim’s text that she was nine years
younger than her husband, but that is all. Princip’s brothers (26 and 18 years old) were ordinary,
calm and inconspicuous. One of them was a trader, and the other attended a gymnasium.
As for Princip, he was always healthy, did not have enuresis or any serious injuries before his
imprisonment, did not suffer from insomnia (though apparently had some trouble sleeping while
he was at school), survived scarlet fever and never experienced fainting. He was always an excel­
lent pupil: quiet, shy, calm and sentimental, he liked to read, was indifferent towards religion, and
had an interest in politics. When he was about 17, he fell in love with a girl.9
Such love for reading, his boyish infatuation with books, his inner peace (despite horrible condi­
tions and his obviously approaching death), were all beyond the boundaries of psychoanalysis that
Martin Pappenheim knew. There was no rivalry or resentment and nothing incestuous or pathologi­
cally repressive in Princip’s statements. The young assassin who was living his final days in Terezin
was not neurotic or sexually frustrated. On the contrary, he had a girlfriend, and had a romantic
relationship with her that was quite normal for the time. Obviously, with his love of books and
reading, he had a tendency to intellectualize – one could even say a tendency for sublimation. This
is how Pappenhem records Princip’s description of his prison days:

The cells are bad, with no books, nothing to read, he has no friends. He is used to always reading. He
suffers, mostly because he has nothing to read. At night he sleeps four hours at best. He always dreams.
Nice dreams. About life and, love, without fear. ([Pappenheim and Princip], 1926a: 12; see also Ković,
2014: 838)

The lack of classic Freudian motives is conspicuous. Princip lives, thinks, feels, speaks as some­
one whose very being, despite predictions imposed by theory, paradoxically places him beyond
the pleasure principle. When asked whether he feels sorry because he will leave his bones in the
cell, Princip, calmly and with a faint smile, replied briefly: ‘that is what I counted on’ (Ković,
2014: 849).

Freud and World War I

Freud’s reactions to World War I were patriotic feelings and open enthusiasm, as his correspond­
ence with Ferenczi convincingly shows. His sons were mobilized and, as he himself admitted, he
put his entire libido in the service of (his homeland) Austria-Hungary. He was very upset by the
fact that at the beginning of the war his daughter Ana was in England, that is, with the enemy,10 and
Jevremović 87

he felt anger towards Serbia which he could not control. This anger, he admitted, was a product of
fermentation of the libido, the same libido that was fully invested in the monarchy: he was a loyal
subject of the Habsburg monarchy.11
As the war progressed, Freud slowly changed from his initial view. His patriotic feelings were
replaced by disappointment, and his enthusiasm by deep pessimism. The general increase in sav­
agery and pervasive destruction led Freud to modify his theory. He formulated a new drive theory,
followed by a coinciding (new) topic, and abandoned further development of the theory of narcis­
sism, turning completely to biologistic speculations. The formally accepted antagonism between
the pleasure principle and the reality principle was replaced by a new one: between the life drive
and the death drive. A radical break with his theoretical system meant Freud was shifting towards
biologistic metaphysics. In his later texts, a specific form of resignation had prevailed, followed by
mythologized pessimism; as we know, the focus of this was Freud’s determination to explain (both
to himself and to others) the meaning of the fall of civilization, whose product he considered him­
self to be. This pushed him into the domain of unconventional speculations.
It is easy to detect the break in the history of the production of some of Freud’s key texts. Two
key texts for his theory of narcissism (‘A metapsychological supplement to the theory of dreams’
and ‘Mourning and melancholia’) were written in 1915 but published two years later (Freud,
1917/2001b, 1917/2001c). This was followed by both a personal and a professional crisis, and his
next text (‘Beyond the pleasure principle’) was not published until 1920 (Freud, 1920/2001d).
Most importantly, in the tragic experience of the first great European war of the modern age,
Freud discovered the paradoxical possibility of being placed beyond the pleasure principle.
Certainly, to get the whole picture, we should bear in mind everything that was happening to Freud
and his family. The historiography of psychoanalysis in the broader sense has studied these issues
thoroughly, and there are many fine books and studies dedicated to this subject.
However, an unexplored possibility is that, before Parežanin published Pappenheim’s text in
1926, Freud saw the transcript of Pappenheim’s interview with Princip. This text offered, with
documentary precision, the portrait of Gavrilo Princip as a man ‘beyond the pleasure principle’.
Pappenheim’s Princip was no Übermensch, and had not attempted to be one. He was an enthusiast;
he (apparently) had no problems with his father, and had a strong will and evident readiness to die.
As he said, he had no desire to become a hero, only a desire to die for his idea. He was childish and
naive (but still, he was reading Kropotkin and Nietzsche, and liked some Serbian poets), shy and
uncertain, but at the same time he was unshakeably determined to endure the most horrible possi­
ble pain and torment.
The heir to the throne of a powerful empire was killed by a group of high school students. The
plot that resulted in the assassination in Sarajevo had more similarity to novels by Dostoyevsky
than to episodes of political history of the old continent. Most importantly, the enthusiastic group
of amateur conspirators had not been indoctrinated. They gathered together of their own accord;
they read and debated, as well as they could, what they themselves had chosen to read. They did
not have a father, they had an idea, and they acted in the name of that idea. They did not listen to
anybody else, and nobody controlled them. In terms of their generation, they were the sons of
anguished (in many ways underprivileged) fathers. That is, their fathers (from the perspective of
the boyish revolutionary maximalism) were by no means heroes. In hard circumstances, their
fathers somehow tried to survive, but were miserable, depressed, scared and uncertain.12 This was
not enough for their sons, who wanted more than just survival.13 They wanted to partake in the
great history, so they needed ideas, grand ideas. These were usually boyish, pompously declared,
new ideas, inevitably entailing new values, which were significantly different from the ones learned
at home.14 How should we understand this passion of high school boys for self-education, for
knowledge and learning, for books? Finally, what should one think of the cult (in the true sense) of
88 History of Psychiatry 31(1)

the deceased Žerajić?15 Princip entrusted a secret to his girlfriend, Jelena Jezdimirović (later
Milišić): ‘Jelena, I adore the late Bogdan Žerajić. I often visit his grave at night, kiss his cross and
the ground under which he lies . . .’ (Ković, 2014: 850).
It is certain that some of the people subordinate to Dragutin Dimitrijević Apis16 gave minor
logistic support to Princip’s group. It is quite possible that Apis had nothing against the idea of
assassinating Franz Ferdinand, but when (or if) he heard that some kids from Bosnia were actu­
ally planning to go through with it, he probably had difficulty believing it. We do not know what
Apis did, but we do know that some of his men handed to a group of amateur conspirators
(Princip and friends) some third-class weapons (along with ampoules of poison that did not
work) and enabled them to travel – and that was all.17 Apis was a serious professional when it
came to his job, and the people around him were probably the same. I do not get the impression
that they expected much from Princip and his gang and, in fact, I think the way that events
unfolded caught them by surprise. The event that they superficially supported – and did not
believe would happen – happened.
Princip and his companions surprised many, from Apis and Ferdinand’s security staff to Martin
Pappenheim, and maybe even Freud.18 Princip lived without complying with existing expectations,
and that is how he died. He was literally falling apart when he talked to Martin Pappenheim while
on the verge of dying; from within him spoke some peculiar force and self-determination. He
undoubtedly accepted his fate. Despite horrid conditions and constant torture, it seemed that he
was peculiarly at peace with himself, and had no regrets. In spite of his youth, he seemed mature.19

Beyond the pleasure principle

Pappenheim deeply admired Freud and, in a way, he was his pupil. What Freud thought of
Pappenheim we still do not know. We can indirectly conclude that the psychoanalytic world accepted
Pappenheim; after all, he attended meetings that took place in Freud’s house. At that time, Gavrilo
Princip was one of the most important prisoners in Austro-Hungarian prisons. He was an ordinary
little man who (literally) aimed at the empire itself, and hit. The transcript of notes of conversations
with such a man would naturally be interesting for Sigmund Freud, especially as the interviews were
carried out by someone who had organic ties with Freud’s own beliefs. We know that Pappenheim
gave a transcript of his conversation to Ratko Parežanin, who was unknown, so it is highly likely
that he also gave it to his teacher, Freud.
Archives remain silent regarding this question, and many documents are unfortunately lost.
However, some possible traces are appearing, and time will show what they offer to us.
In any case, it is easy to recognize a certain parallelism between the late Freudian texts, primar­
ily ‘Beyond the pleasure principle’ (Freud, 1920/2001d), and Pappenheim’s transcript. Pappenheim’s
text exposes inadequacies of Freud’s earlier theory, and Freud’s later theory attempts to reduce
some of those deficiencies. Apart from that, it attempts to bring meaning to the deeply-felt ‘tragi­
cism’ of Freud’s experience of World War I. Discontent in culture – caused by suppression of
sexual desire – was replaced by uncertainty in a culture oppressed by potential destruction and
death. The state of frustration, fundamental for Freud’s early thought, gave way to deep anxiety,
rooted in the core of civilization. Freud had trouble in finding words for this anxiety. The result was
his second drive theory.
Gavrilo Princip, whose words were quoted in Pappenheim’s transcript, was one of the (sym­
bolic) voices of history. On the walls of his prison cell in Terezin he wrote these words: ‘Our shad­
ows will walk through Vienna, wander the court, and frighten the lords’ (quoted in Ković, 2014:
852). Freud was horrified by history. He knew a lot about ‘shadows’ in human souls, and had dealt
with them all of his life, trying to understand and talk with them. He worked a lot, read a lot and
Jevremović 89

was curious. When something was important to him, he was usually well informed. Finally, he
carefully observed the different ways his theories were accepted and implemented. So I firmly
believe that if he ever had the opportunity to read Pappenheim’s transcript, he would certainly have
responded to it in some way. We know that Freud hid his (possible) sources on several occasions.
His relationship with Nietzsche is a characteristic example and, in particular, his systematic silence
when it comes to (possible) ties between Nietzsche’s On the Genealogy of Morality (1887) and
certain assumptions of Freud’s theory.
Did Pappenheim (i.e. the transcript of his conversation with Princip) have the same destiny as
Nietzsche’s book? I do not know, but his conspicuous absence from the official heritage of remem­
brance should somehow be explained. Everyone forgot about him – psychoanalysts as well as
Jews; that is, former (Jewish) Palestine, today’s state of Israel.20
In any case, the first passage of Freud’s letter to Ferenczi, written immediately after the news
about the assassination in Sarajevo, seems prophetic: ‘I am writing under the impression of the sur­
prising murder in Sarajevo, the consequences of which cannot be foreseen . . .’ (Freud, 1992: 562).

Funding
The author(s) received no financial support for the research, authorship and/or publication of this article.

Notes
  1. A brief biography can be found in Roth, 1978: 323.
  2. On 6 May 1912, Pappenheim was a guest at the meeting of the Vienna Psychoanalytic Society. An edi­
tor’s note next to Pappenheim’s name is interesting: ‘This was probably Dr. Max Pappenheim, who later
became a professor of psychiatry at the University of Vienna and a member of the Vienna Psychoanalytic
Association.’ The mention of Max instead of Martin is obviously an error (Nunberg and Federn, 1975:
63). Additional information about Pappenheim’s later ties with the Vienna Psychoanalytical Society can
be found in Giefer, 2007.
  3. Why Pappenheim asked Princip to respond to some of his questions in written form is still unclear. Maybe
it was because of the language barrier. Princip certainly had trouble expressing himself in German, so
perhaps Pappenheim asked him to write down his responses, then this could be translated afterwards by
someone who knew Serbian. This assumption – in the absence of more concrete information – seems con­
vincing. However, it is unclear why Pappenheim would ask Princip to write down this sort of information.
The first note (dated 12 June 1916) is Princip’s response to the question of how Kropotkin was read and
interpreted among the Young Bosnian comradeship. The other (dated 5 June 1916) responds to the ques­
tion of who the ‘committees’ (komitadžije) were. The subject matter of both questions goes way beyond
Pappenheim’s supposed professional interests and seems to belong more to the investigative domain than
the psychopathological. It is possible (of course, this is only my speculation) that Pappenheim, in order
to show he was cooperative, asked Princip these questions as a kind of service to the investigative struc­
tures of the prison administration, which might have been interested in the replies. This may explain why
Princip, who was otherwise forbidden to write or read, was granted an exemption on two occasions.
  4. Ratko Parežanin was born in Konjic in 1898. He was a member of Young Bosnia (as a minor he was
imprisoned in Arad), completed his degree at the Faculty of Philology in Belgrade, and was one of the
founders of the Balkan (later called Balkanologic) Institute. In 1924, he served as a press secretary of
the royal mission of the Kingdom of Serbs, Croats and Slovenes in Vienna. In 1927 he became a deputy
in the Parliament of Yugoslavia, and afterwards he was appointed to a diplomatic mission in Vienna in
the period 1929–33. After the end of World War II, he emigrated and worked actively on promoting his
(mostly nationalist and right-wing) ideas. In relation to this, he published a large number of texts, articles
and books. He died in München in 1981.
  5. Princip’s personality profile based on graphological findings can be found in Kafka, 1971: 10.
  6. This explains his contribution to published works by the famous reflexologist Bekhterev, which were
translated into German, e.g. Bechterev, 1926.
90 History of Psychiatry 31(1)

  7. The text published on the occasion of the death of Pappenheim’s daughter, Elsa, provides indirect evi­
dence of that; Frischauf, 2009: 30.
  8. Freud Museum London, Archives, Reference number SF/03/04/05/31.
  9. The testimony of Jelena Milišić (born Jezdimirović), Gavrilo Princip’s girlfriend, is preserved; for more
details, see Ković, 2014: 850.
10. As he wrote: ‘it is certain, a war is on its way. I would be engrossed in it if England was not on the oppos­
ing side. That is, if Ana (since she is in England) is not where she is not supposed to be’; Falzeder, 2002:
269.
11. In this sense, Freud’s letter to Ferenczi, sent on 23 August 1914, is characteristic. Among other things,
Freud openly writes about the excitement (euphoria) he felt regarding the event in Sarajevo and the
declaration of war against Serbia. He wrote that he would put his entire libido in the service of the
Austro-Hungarian monarchy (Freud, 1996: 13). However, he soon experienced a change, and this libido
gradually became fury. A month earlier, in a letter to Karl Abraham (26 July 1914), after many angry
words about Jung, he added (with regard to the assassination in Sarajevo): ‘that might be the first time I
felt I was Austrian’; Falzeder, 2002: 26.
12. This possibly explains another fact, at least to some extent: the absence of Oedipal problems, both in
terms of the individual and the group. Speaking in terms of contemporary psychoanalysis, what hap­
pened between the disoriented (defeated) fathers and their Young Bosnia sons is by no means rivalry. The
defeated father is not a rival; he is a burden. He is not someone to be defeated, but someone who already
is defeated, and a son is supposed to survive his father’s defeat, so as to keep on living. Paradoxically,
what happened with the Young Bosnia members is analogous to what Lacan claimed had happened
to James Joyce (Lacan, 2005: 1–25). Technically speaking, his term for this was sintom. Sintom is a
structural modification of subjectivity perceived in accordance with the model of the Borromean knot.
It is crucial to establish a direct connection (i.e. knot, node) between the order of the symbolic and the
real. This enables the inauguration of the new name and meaning within the relation between father and
son. Despite the father with whom it is impossible to identify, the son (now) becomes the son by being
a father to himself. Thanks to this he avoids psychotic decomposition. Lacan’s logic was as follows:
Joyce gave himself the mission to save his father. He succeeded, Lacan tells us, through transformation
of his personal name that all others will have and adopt. This transformation of personal name leads to
the transformation of language and meaning, sense and knowledge. This is why Joyce is so obsessed
with language, reading and writing. This is why, although in a different setting, the Young Bosnia mem­
ber is so obsessed with reading and writing, language and literature. Joyce is Joyce; Princip is Princip.
Whatever he did, he did not do it for personal reasons, but for reasons of principle. As he himself said
during investigation, ‘I am no evil-doer since I removed the one who did evil. I meant good’ (Ković,
2014: 641).
13. Čabrinović’s conflict with his father on the day of the assassination is a typical example of this: they
argued over whether his father should display the empire’s flag on a tavern that he owned. His father was
for it out of purely pragmatic reasons; the son was against it. We can view Grabež’s letter to his father
in the same way, although it is essentially different in tone. The entire letter is cited in Parežanin, 2014:
112–13.
14. Vladimir Gaćinović’s words are representative of this line of thought: ‘The Serbian revolutionary, if he
desires to win, must be an artist and constructor, have the talent to fight and suffer, be a martyr and a
conspirator, the man of Western manners and a rebel .  .  .’ (Gaćinović, 1965b: 246); ‘Enthusiasts, dream­
ers, zealots, their youthful flame prompted them to erect and destroy, inspire and prosecute, to revive and
create’ (Gaćinović, 1965a: 232–233).
15. In Sarajevo in 1910, Bogdan Žerajić attempted to murder the notorious general Varešanin, the head of
Bosnia and Herzegovina at that time. Not long before that, he gave up on assassinating Emperor Franz
Joseph, because he was afraid of the possible consequences for his people, and the Emperor himself
seemed a sad old man to him. He did not have similar doubts in relation to Varešanin. He aimed several
shots at the coach that carried him but missed, and then used the last bullet to take his own life. Soon after
this event, Sarajevo schoolchildren started to take off their hats spontaneously while crossing Careva
ćuprija, as a way of honouring Žerajić. In order to stop the further development of this cult, the police
Jevremović 91

beheaded Žerajić’s body, and buried it at a secret location; his head was kept by the police. Nevertheless,
Žerajić’s secret grave spot was soon found and it became a new cult place.
16. Colonel Dragutin Dimitrijević Apis (1876–1917) was a leader of the secret military society Black Hand.
He was involved in the May Coup (1903) when King Alexander Obrenović and his wife Draga Mašin
were assassinated, which brought the Karađorđević dynasty to the Serbian throne. In 1917, at the so-
called Salonika Trial, Apis was accused by Serbian authorities of an alleged attempt to assassinate Prince
Regent Alexander Karađorđević, and was then sentenced to death and executed. However, it was his
involvement in the Sarajevo Assassination that is (officially) believed to stand behind this politically
charged trial and execution. See also Bataković, 2015.
17. The story of their trip from Belgrade to Sarajevo is both comic and anecdotal. For example, after arriving
in Šabac, the great conspirators bought themselves ice-cream, and Čabrinović was babbling so incau­
tiously that he almost put the operation in danger. He was staring at the hidden bomb, and even shot his
gun several times. At one time, the situation obviously reached boiling point, when Princip and Grabež
were forced to take the bombs away from Čabrinović (Milenković, 1914/2014: 133–4).
18. In 1915, Gaćinović wrote at the end of his text on the Sarajevo assassination: ‘It didn’t even occur to
my young friend that his heroic bullet would cause the current World War. And believe me, when I
read about the war events, my head is haunted by a horrible thought: did we, truly, cause all of this?’;
Gaćinović, 1965b: 249.
19. This is the testimony of one of the doctors who treated Princip in Terezin: ‘When in the summer of 1915
I started treating Princip at the surgical department of the garrison hospital in Terezin, he was already a
“candidate” for death, a living corpse: his body, dried to the bones, was covered by many tuberculosis
wounds the size of plates. It is certain that he had germs of tuberculosis in him even before he was cap­
tured, but two years of imprisonment in the casemate of the Terezin fortress were enough for the disease
to break out, and the death of the patient was expected to be soon . . . In spite of being prohibited from
speaking to him, during treatment I had, nonetheless, found several occasions to talk briefly to him. For
him, who could not write, read or talk to anybody, it was a relief to talk to somebody . . . During these
conversations, he never expressed regret about his actions, even if he could predict the horrific conse­
quences of the assassination – the outbreak of the World War. His facial features had an almost ceremo­
nial moment to them: his eyes, deep in their cavity, lost their glow and flame and would shine only when
he spoke of liberating the people. He had patiently surrendered to his destiny, said goodbye to all earthly
things and waited for his end with a stoic peace of mind . . .’; Ković, 2014: 846.
20. For more detail on the reception of psychoanalysis in Palestine, and Pappenheim, see Rolnik, 2013.

References
(All publications with translated titles are in Serbian)
Armstrong HF (1927) Confessions of the assassin whose deed led to the World War. Current History 26(5):
699–706.
Bataković D (2015) The Young Bosnia and the ‘Black Hand’. In: Živojinović DR (ed.) The Serbs and the
First World War 1914–1918. Belgrade: Serbian Academy of Sciences and Arts, 139–152.
Bechterew VM (1926) Allgemeine Grundlagen der Reflexologie des Menschen. Leipzig und Wien: Franz
Deuticke; originally published in Russian in 1923.
Falzeder E (ed.) (2002) The Complete Correspondence of Sigmund Freud and Karl Abraham. London:
Karnac.
Freud S (1992) The Correspondence of Sigmund Freud and Sándor Ferenczi. Vol. 1, 1908–1914, ed. Falzeder
E and Brabant E, with Giampieri-Deutsch P. Cambridge, MA: Belknap Press.
Freud S (1996) The Correspondence of Sigmund Freud and Sándor Ferenczi, Vol. 2, 1814–1919, trans.
Hoffer PT, ed. Falzeder E and Brabant E, with Giampieri Deutsch P. Cambridge, MA: Belknap Press.
Freud S (2001a) Totem and taboo [1913]. In Standard Edition, Vol. 13, London: Hogarth Press, 1–161.
Freud S (2001b) A meta-psychological supplement to the theory of dreams [1917]. In: Standard Edition,
Vol. 14. London: Hogarth Press, 217–235.
Freud S (2001c) Mourning and melancholia [1917]. In: Standard Edition, Vol. 14. London: Hogarth Press,
237–258.
92 History of Psychiatry 31(1)

Freud S (2001d) Beyond the pleasure principle [1920]. In: Standard Edition, Vol. 18. London: Hogarth Press,
7–64.
Frischauf E (2009) Else Pappenheim (1911–2009). A remembrance. The American Psychoanalyst. Quarterly
Magazine of the American Psychoanalytic Association 43(1): 30.
Gaćinović V (1965a) Bogdan Žerajić. In: Palavestra P (ed.) Književnost Mlade Bosne [Literature of Young
Bosnia], II. Sarajevo: Svjetlost, 229–240.
Gaćinović V (1965b) Sarajevski atentat [Sarajevo assassination]. In: Palavestra P (ed.) Književnost Mlade
Bosne [Literature of Young Bosnia], II. Sarajevo: Svjetlost, 242–249.
Giefer M (ed.) (2007) Das Korrespondezblatt de Internationalen Psychoanalytischen Vereinigung erschien
von 1910–1941; accessed (14 Sep. 2019) at: http://www.psyalpha.net/files/docs/izp_korrespondenzblatt
_1910-1941._michael_giefer_2007_1.pdf
Kafka F (1971) Sarajevskẏ atentát a Terezín [Sarajevo assassination and Terezin]. Terezínské listy (no. 2):
1–11.
Ković M (2014) Gavrilo Princip. Dokumenti i sećanja [Gavrilo Princip. Documents and Memories]. Beograd:
Prometej/Radio-televizija Srbije.
Lacan J (2005) Le sinthome. Le séminaire, livre XXIII. Paris: Seuil.
Milenković D (2014) Pucanj u srce imperije. Sarajevo 1914 [Shot in the Heart of Empire. Sarajevo 1914].
Beograd: Princip.
Nunberg H and Federn E (eds) (1975) Minutes of the Vienna Psychoanalytic Society. Vol. IV: 1912–1918.
New York: International Universities Press.
Pappenheim M (1914) Die Neurosen und Psychosen des Pubertätsalters. Berlin: Springer.
Pappenheim M (1916) Ṻber Psychosen bei Kriegsgefangenen. Zeitschift für die gesamte Neurologie und
Psychiatrie 33: 518–525.
Pappenheim M (1922) Die Lumbalpunktion. Wien: Rikola.
Pappenheim M (1930) Neurosen und Psychosen der weiblichen Generationsphasen. Berlin: Julius Springer.
[Pappenheim M and Princip G] (1926a) Gavrilo Princips Bekenntnisse: zwei Manuskripte Princips;
Aufzeichnungen seines Gefängnispsychiaters Dr. Pappenheim aus Gesprächen von Feber bis Juni 1916
über das Attentat, Princips Leben und seine politischen und sozialen Anschauungen; mit Einführung und
Kommentar von R. P. Wien: R. Lechner & Sohn.
[Pappenheim M and Princip G] (1926b) Princip o sebi. Dva manuskripta Gavrila Principa. Stenografske
bilješke docenta Dra Martina Papenhajma o čestim razgovorima sa Gavrilom Principom u vremenu od
februara do juna 1916. O uticaju njegova života, o atentatu i o njegovim političkim i socijalnim idejama.
Sa predgovorom i komentarom R. P. Zagreb: Jugoslovenska štampa; in Serbian.
Parežanin R (2014) Gavrilo Princip u Beogradu [Gavrilo Princip in Belgrade]. Beograd: Catena mundi.
Rolnik E (2013) Freud auf Hebräisch: Geschichte der Psychoanalyse im Jüdischen Palästina. Göttingen:
Vandenhoek Ruprecht Verlag.
Roth G (1978) Österreichisches Biographiches Lexikon 1815–1950. Bd.7. Wien: Österreichische Akademie
der Wissenschaften.