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Berggasse 19,
Vienna IX,
27.9.1910
Dear Dr Pfister,
I returned rather hurriedly yesterday from Syracuse-Palermo-Rome to avoid the cholera in Naples, hence the delay; normally I answer your letters more promptly.
From what you say I cannot yet form a very good idea of your gift-of-tongues effort,1 but I expect you will soon be in a position to reveal all the so-called involuntary actions as the work of complexes. Certainly something can be done with it, first of all a stimulating paper in the Zentralblatt, and then all sorts of other things.
As you do me the honour of asking my advice about the writing of the book, let me say frankly that the way to which you feel less drawn seems to me the more appropriate and the more advantageous to the reader. In the present state of our knowledge all the fundamentals, consciousness, emotion, etc., are better left in the semi-darkness from which they stand out so well, while one occupies oneself with the outbuildings, approaches, etc., which are only now becoming perceptible. For that the learner will be very grateful.
Professor G., to whom you in your humanitarianism were much too kind, now claims in a criticism of the Year Book in the Journal of Psychology (and Physiology of the Sense Organs) that you pronounced him to be free of complexes. He does not mention you by name, but I know that he means you, because he told us the same thing. As I believe the fellow to be incapable of speaking the truth, I assume that what he says in this case is from three quarters to five quarters false too.
I too begin my working year on October I, and hope that it will bring all of us no less progress and friendship than the last.
Cordially yours,
Freud
Deuticke had delayed your Count somewhat, but promises to launch him very soon.