Preface to Psychoanalysis and faith: the letters of Sigmund Freud and Oskar Pfister

In the totally non-religious Freud household Pfister, in his clerical garb and with the manners and behaviour of a pastor, was like a visitor from another planet. In him there was nothing of the almost passionately impatient enthusiasm for science which caused other pioneers of analysis to regard time spent at the family table only as an unwelcome interruption of their theoretical and clinical discussions. On the contrary, his human warmth and enthusiasm, his capacity for taking a lively part in the minor events of the day, enchanted the children of the household, and made him at all times a most welcome guest, a uniquely human figure in his way. To them, as Freud remarked, he was not a holy man, but a kind of Pied Piper of Hamelin, who had only to play on his pipe to gather a whole host of willing young followers behind him.

It was this overflowing of feelings for psycho-analysis to its founder, and from him to his children, that led Pastor Pfister after Freud's death to leave the correspondence to me, ‘the daughter of his great benefactor', as he called me, with permission to make use of suitable material, subject to the reservation that nothing should be published that might give offence to any living person.