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This book is a moving, living, touching and almost poetic account of the mutual respect, amity, warmth and love of two great men. One is tempted to speak even of “two great souls.” There is a rhapsodic quality to these lettters which makes the reading of them a heart-warmingly “soulish” experience.
True greatness is evident on both sides, although it takes very different forms. On the one hand, the vivacious, enthusiastic and eternally optimistic Pfister, who pours out gratitude to his teacher, calling him “Professor” in his salutations, but “my great benefactor” in the body of his letters; on the other hand, the sober, measured, and stoical Freud who calls his friend a “Dear Man of God” and a “Holy Man,” in a tone of endearment, perhaps even with some nostalgia for the lost paradise which Pfister hoped to recapture with the conceptual and technical tools his teacher had given to the world. Isn't there some envy in Freud's letter of June 1, 1927, in which he acknowledges having destroyed, at Pfister's own request, a substantial portion of the pastor's letters to him, and then goes on to say: “I pictured you in my mind as you were then, with all your winning characteristics, your enthusiasm, your exuberant gratitude, your courageous integrity, the way you blossomed forth after your first contact with analysis, as well as your blessed confidence in people who were so soon to disappoint you?” And isn't there some naivete in Pfister when he writes on October,: “In the first place … you are no Jew, which to me, in view of my unbounded admiration for Amos, Isaiah, Jeremiah, and the author of Job and Ecclesiastes, is a matter of profound regret, and in the second place you are not godless, for he who lives the truth lives in God …; I should say of you: A better Christian there never was …” And even in, well after the publication of Freud's