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Tatranska, Lomnica [Tatra-Lomnic]
30. xii. 32
Dear Father Freud,
I feel I must write and wish you a Happy New Year. With each new essay I read you help me forwards and upwards out of the confusions which as reanimated unconscious residues oppress and overshadow me. These residues took from me my pleasure in life, work and success and distorted my relationship to my wife and children and prevented my sleeping, because I knew that by means of your methods and your inspired step-by-step approach it would be possible to get at what was unresolved within me, and yet I knew of no access to the magic formulas. After reading ‘Metapsy-chology of Dreams’1 and ‘Mourning and Melancholia’2 I saw the light, I dreamt an excellent dream and I feel that I am on the right path. And yet I had only brought the book here with me for the sake of Group Psychology and the Analysis of the Ego to help me with my revision of Caliban.
And at the same time you have afforded me help of a scientific nature which acted like a flash of lightning for me when I was describing a case of amentia3: the hero of my next novel, whose psychical transformations I have had clear in my mind for a year now, goes through a state of mind which I have experienced completely myself, and which you have helped me to understand scientifically. So thank you for everything and may you have lovely bright days in January, such as we are enjoying here in December. I am coming to Vienna in February—I shall fix the dates while I am here and I will write to you soon.
Till then, a good 1933.
Yours
Zweig
Amentia: Extreme form of psychosis, combined with hallucinations, delusions and loss of orientation.