You do not currently have permission to view the full text for this document. Please sign in to an account with an active subscription or contact support.
Berggasse 19, Vienna IX, 11.4.1926
Dear Dr Pfister,
I like to think of this letter's travelling to Sicily, which is prohibited to me.
I now lie down for an hour every day with a hot water bottle and am using the leisure to read the book about the Christian fakir1 which your son brought. (I should have liked to have talked to him, but I am now supposed to take a great deal of rest and not see visitors.) The book amused me more than it pleased me. For myself I was glad that I have no religion and therefore do not find myself in the cleft stick which you cannot avoid. So far as you were concerned, I was sorry that you had to busy yourself with such (let us call it) muck. No doubt it will do good in some circles, or you would not have done it. All the same, it is a pity that even you could not be completely honest. You could not possibly count it a virtue of the psychopath that he made such fine speeches, the patterns for which have for a long time been available to all. But that seems to be the whole of his merit.
You will have no difficulty in finding contributors to your new series in Vienna and Berlin; you only have to ask the heads of groups, Dr Simmel2 and Dr Federn3 for names.
If you are really still in Sicily when you receive these lines, bear in mind how much pleasure it would give me to be with you.
Yours,
Freud