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Göttingen, 14 June 1917
Dear Professor,
Very many thanks for sending me your new book [Introductory Lectures on Psycho-Analysis]. I fell upon it like a starving man as soon as it reached me four days ago. Nevertheless you must believe me that it was not only on that account that it tasted so good (gastronomic comparisons are inevitable these days!). Apart from anything else the ‘conversational’ tone, as befits a series of lectures, is a source of delight. This gives us unfortunates, scattered to all quarters of the globe, the impression that we are once more talking together. And after my first enjoyment of the book as a whole I picked out the freshest and plumpest plums from the cake. I read with especial care the passage about the libidinal anxiety-components, which explains so subtly the inappropriateness of the anxiety affect in face of danger; and also the discussions on transference, which have enlightened me on many points, about which I thought I was already quite clear. Also, the additional discoveries which have been made in the last few years can be much more easily assimilated in this new context. And so this third part will be even richer in content than the first two.
I imagine it must have been a pleasant feeling for you to have erected and equipped your own house in such a way that something of its meaning and value should have been made accessible to a wider public. And it is high time that this should happen, for this wider public is now at last pressing at the doors and demanding admittance.
Moreover, I must say that for me personally a powerful magic always remains attached to the foundations, the initial phases, of psycho-analysis, making works of this kind especially valuable to me. Though this may well be connected with the intrinsically less desirable circumstances that one (i.e., I) did not in practice penetrate as far in self-analysis as in the analysis of others, and so feel that one's most appropriate place is really right at the beginning of