On 18 March 1879 a 16-year-old Viennese schoolboy made an entry in his journal: 'A diary is found, of course the most recent one (about Emilie). Big scenes with my father.' The boy was Arthur Schnitzler, later to become Vienna's most celebrated playwright, and his diary contained a detailed record of his precocious sexual adventures. The father, an eminent throat specialist and university professor, summoned the boy to his study and gave him a furious dressing-down, frightening him with repellent medical illustrations of syphilis. The son was outraged. He never forgave his father for ransacking his desk and unlocking his secret drawer. In his diaries, he continued to chronicle a sex life as predatory and callous as it was promiscuous. Meanwhile, he made a half-hearted attempt to join his father as a doctor. Only after his father's death did he rebel and abandon medicine, quickly becoming famous for his plays.

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