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Göttingen, 20.vi.1918
Dear Professor,
Almost at the same time as your letter there arrived the new number,104 containing the two further sections—which I had almost given up hope of receiving—of the still unprinted Metapsychology. In consequence I have been carrying on an almost
uninterrupted conversation with you, even though I did not mean it to reach your ears quite yet. What joy these long-awaited chapters have given me! It is true that they break off at a point where the tension becomes so great that one cannot help asking for more: it will come soon, won't it? In any case everything is so closely interconnected that it can scarcely be digested in parts; every argument is related ever more cogently and inevitably to every other. And when you say, as you are fond of saying, that you are satisfied with the fragmentary, at a deeper level it is clear how little it is really a question of the fragmentary, and how the unifying factor emerges unsought and of itself precisely from your method of procedure.
Moreover, it must be admitted that psycho-analysis has made vast strides since the time when it was proud to deduce, however tentatively, the normal from the pathological, whereas now it is the normal which is able to throw new light on the pathological (as in your papers on dreams and mourning). In connection with the discussion of melancholia I couldn't help thinking: fundamentally it is no doubt the case that in both instances, ‘normal’ as well as pathological, a part must remain in the unconscious, in order that the other part can become active. For not only must the melancholic have repressed the forgotten accusations against the object which lie behind his apparent self-reproaches, but also, for instance, the lover (whom you select as an example of the opposite tendency) must remain unconscious of the element of self-love, of narcissism, in his enthusiasm for the object. He and the melancholic reveal to each other to some extent their mutual repressions, in this