Letter from Freud to Lou Andreas-Salomé, May 25, 1916

25.5.16
Vienna IX, Berggasse 19

Dear Frau Andreas

I cannot believe that there is any danger of your misunderstanding any of our arguments; if so it must be our, in this case my, fault. After all, you are an ‘understander’ par excellence; and in addition your commentary is an amplification and improvement on the original. I am always particularly impressed when I read what you have to say on one of my papers. I know that in writing I have to blind myself artificially in order to focus all the light on one dark spot, renouncing cohesion, harmony, rhetoric and everything which you call symbolic, frightened as I am by the experience that any such claim or expectation involves the danger of distorting the matter under investigation, even though it may embellish it. Then you come along and add what is missing, build upon it, putting what has been isolated back into its proper context. I cannot always follow you, for my eyes, adapted as they are to the dark, probably can't stand strong light or an extensive range of vision. But I haven't become so much of a mole as to be incapable of enjoying the idea of a brighter light and more spacious horizon, or even to deny their existence.

Your card, nevertheless, did bring me one minor disappointment. I was under the impression that your essay was finished and wouldn't keep us waiting much longer. I beg you not to postpone it and not to wait for my book to appear first. My book consisting of twelve essays of this kind cannot be published before the end of the war, and who knows how long after that ardently longed-for date? Spans of life are unpredictable and I would so much like to be able to have read your contribution before it is too late. But should you be referring to my Lectures, they contain absolutely nothing that could tell you anything new.

Today I received the first galleys of your ‘Anal and Sexual’.

With many cordial greetings,
Yours,
Freud