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2637 Durant Avenue, Berkeley, 31.7.1930
… I am writing a lecture for the psycho-analytical society in New York on ‘The Origin and Conquest of Anxiety and Obsession in Judaeo-Christian Religious History’. It is a subject which has been in my mind for years, and it first attracted my attention because it provided such magnificent corroboration of your theories. But then big new problems presented themselves, such, for instance, as the substitution of the doctrine of revenge and sacrifice by the principle of love and forgiveness. My principle of psychological continuity make it easy for me to understand the practice of sacrifice. The need for retribution has been magnificently elucidated by your work in recent years. In regard to the genuinely Christian conception of forgiveness, as represented, for instance, in the parable of the prodigal son (St Luke, xv), there is obviously a regression to the childhood state in which the child is not yet treated by the standard of good and evil, but simply with love and kindness. However, that does not solve the real problem. The application of the principle of retribution or forgiveness is among the most difficult things in education. We always have to set up rules, which leads to all sorts of trouble, until we are forced to overthrow the rules and return to the original intention. Is there not analytic action in all acts of grace and forgiveness? …
It always gives me great pleasure to see the great stream that bears your name growing stronger, deepening its bed, and widening.