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Berggasse 19,
Vienna IX,
10.1.1910
Dear Dr Pfister,
The year is still young enough for me to be able to begin this letter by expressing the wish that it may be a deservedly happy one for you. My wish for myself, that in the course of it I may win the friendship of more men such as you, is probably too ambitious to have any prospect of fulfilment.
I can answer your theoretical doubts in accordance with your own inclination. There need have been no shameful or horrible incident, but only subsequent repression made it so. All repressions are of memories, not of experiences; at most the latter are repressed in retrospect. With the complexes one must be very careful; indispensable as the idea (of complexes) is in various performances, when one is theorising one should always try to find out what lies behind the complex, not make a frontal attack, which is too vague and inadequate.
I am naturally greatly looking forward to your reply and shall read it with pleasure. I have already admitted my misquotation of the line of Oedipus. On the other hand he3