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Berggasse 19,
Vienna IX,
22.10.1927
Dear Dr Pfister,
Such is your magnanimity that I expected no other answer to my ‘declaration of war'. The prospect of your making a public stand against my pamphlet gives me positive pleasure, it will be refreshing in the discordant critical chorus
for which I am prepared. We know that by different routes we aspire to the same objectives for poor humanity.
On the question of therapeutic technique I must express myself plainly. You as a minister naturally have the right to call on all the reinforcements at your command, while we as analysts must be more reserved, and must lay the chief accent on the effort to make the patient independent, which often works out to the disadvantage of the therapy. Apart from that, I am not so far from your point of view as you think. You know the human propensity to take precepts literally or exaggerate them. I know very well that in the matter of analytic passivity that is what some of my pupils do. Of H. in particular I am willing to believe that he spoils the effect of analysis by a certain listless indifference, and then neglects to lay bare the resistances which he thereby awakens in his patients. It should not be concluded from this instance that analysis should be followed by a synthesis, but rather that thorough analysis of the transference situation is of special importance. What then remains of the transference may, indeed should, have the character of a cordial human relationship.
A.B. undoubtedly has very many paranoid traits—but we can continue the work not without good hopes.
With cordial greetings,
Yours,
Freud