Despite Freud's tendency to deny this, there can be little doubt that the Cocaine Episode was an important part of his scientific and therapeutic work. Elsewhere we have proposed a reading of Freud's Cocaine Papers which considers them as a beginning of the Freudian adventure Freud's encounter with the drug cocaine in 1884 triggered a desire in him to cure not only others, but also himself of his neurotic and neurasthenic symptoms. One of the first objects of this desire was his friend and colleague von Fleischl Marxov who had become addicted to morphine. Freud hoped to be able to wean his friend off morphine by substituting it with cocaine. This failed miserably and consequently we can say that whilst addiction was Freud's first object of his desire to cure, it also became his first real obstacle and medical mistake.

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