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Berggasse 19,
Vienna IX,
1.1.1913
Dear Dr Pfister,
Many thanks for your New Year greetings. As we all attach importance to time-limits, let me express the hope that you will finish your book this year.
You and Messmer will be pleased at the firmness with which I propose to defend the rights of educationists to analysis.
In the matter of the libido, there is no reason why you should allow your own view to be overruled. Open your eyes and see for yourself. I am not in any doubt that this ‘modification’ by your fellow-countrymen is no advance in the direction of truth. The argument that they deduce from the Jones case sounds very strange to me. (Incidentally, as you correctly surmise, it had no influence on Jones himself.) I have myself analysed and cured several cases of real incest (of the most severe kind), and was no more able then than now to deduce from them any argument against the real meaning of incest. Or has knowledge of repression already died out in Zürich? That would explain a great deal, and also revive a lot of old puzzles.
Jung's behaviour in the case of our Frau H. was very ambiguous, but on principle I made no detail of the affair a casus belli. He would have spared himself the severe conflict of which you write if only he had not preferred to imagine himself in possession of the secret of curing her cito et jucunde. I am inclined to think that he had never had the opportunity of dealing with a case of such intensity and had no idea of the difficulties involved. Do not have too much confidence in a lasting personal agreement between me and Jung. He demands too much of me, and I am retreating from my overestimation of him. It will be sufficient if the unity of the association is maintained.
With cordial greetings,
Yours,
Freud