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Berggasse 19,
Vienna IX,
19.7.1910
Dear Dr Pfister,
Your Zinzendorf went off the same day to Deuticke, who received it with the gratified remark: ‘Something from quite a different circle’. Did he mean the author or the subject?
In your theoretical doubts go quietly into the question of transference and resistance. In the earlier catharsis the transference was taken for granted, rather like the omnipresence of the divine being; Herr X and Frau Y are present, with the Lord as onlooker, but He is taken for granted and so He remains unmentioned. The difficulties begin only when the transference is hostile and negative, and depend on the extent to which it is these things, as it is in the case of most decent neurotics.
With sublimation one is dependent less on one's views than on the patient's capacity. One does what one can.
Your idea of polarisation is excellent. I call it disentangling the conflicts in which our instincts generally make their appearance. It is as if a cook put all the sugar in one corner of the batter and all the salt in the other. Naturally that spoils the dish. A beautiful but not yet completely worked out idea.
With grateful thanks for leaving me the count and best wishes for the summer.
Yours,
Freud
P.S. Pages 9ff. seemed familiar to me from the ideas of Jung.