Editing Sigmund Freud (section)

== Friendships and Emotional Detachment ==
Freud’s most enduring friendship was with Wilhelm Fleiss, to whom he wrote with '''obsessive frequency—nearly once every ten days'''. This is typical of '''autistic compulsive communication''': intense, one-sided, and lacking in nuance or mutuality. When Freud fell out with someone, he '''excommunicated them completely''', with no emotional repair or forgiveness—a further marker of '''empathic deficit''' and binary thinking.

He also avoided emotional intimacy. His marriage was largely functional. His children, especially Anna Freud, were drawn into his '''intellectual system''', but he showed little warmth or conventional fatherly affection. This '''instrumental approach to relationships''' is common in high-functioning autism.
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