Letter from Sigmund Freud to Oskar Pfister, June 21, 1920

Berggasse 19, Vienna IX, 21.6.1920

Dear Dr Pfister,

I picked up your little book2 on expressionism with as much interest as aversion, and read it through at a sitting. Then I found I liked it very much, not so much the purely analytical part, which cannot overcome the difficulty of communication to non-analysts, but the links you establish with the subject and what you make of them. It kept reminding me of what a good, kind person, you are. This Pfister, I said to myself, is a man to whom any kind of unfairness is totally alien, you cannot compare yourself to him, and how lucky it is that you cannot help agreeing with everything that he comes across in his path. For you must know that in practice I am dreadfully intolerant of fools, see only the harmful side of them, and that, so far as these ‘artists’ are concerned, I am actually one of those whom you brand at the outset as philistines and barbarians. You explain clearly and exhaustively why these people lack the right to claim the name of artist.

Please accept my warm thanks for this enrichment of my psycho-analytical treasure.

Your devoted

Freud

P.S. What is your charming son doing?