Letter from Sigmund Freud to Oskar Pfister, June 9, 1924

Berggasse 19,
Vienna IX,
9.6.1924

Dear Dr Pfister,

Your Psycho-Analytic Method, which is still your most important book, has reached me, and after its transformation has still more claim for praise and good wishes for its success. I hope you will not take amiss two small observations. The first is that you are guilty of an inaccuracy, in a supremely unimportant matter, it is true, in Note 1 on page 2, where you give personal details about me. Actually I was never a full professor of neurology and was never anything but a lecturer. I became a titular professor in 1902 and a titular full professor in 1920, have never given up my academic post, but have continued with it for thirty-two years, and finally gave up my voluntary lectures in 1918. All that is very unimportant, but perhaps a critic might seize on this minor inaccuracy to cast doubt on your accuracy in general.

My second observation is that you still show too much respect for the poverty of Adler. Just ask yourself what difference it would make to your work if you had never heard of the Adlerian theory.

The book must contain a whole mass of other mistakes but, as I share them with you, I cannot detect them or criticise you for them.

At the beginning of July we are proposing to go to Wald-haus Flims in Graubünden for six or seven weeks. Perhaps you will be able to pop over and see us.

With cordial greetings,
Yours,
Freud