Letter from Freud to Lou Andreas-Salomé, February 17, 1919

9.3.19
Vienna IX, Berggasse 19

Dear Frau Andreas

Strange that one does not hasten to answer all the more quickly because one knows that the letter will take ten times as long as in normal times. On the contrary, one pushes to one side everything which reminds one of the hated change which has taken place. One is always influenced by emotional rather than by practical considerations.

You ask whether you should try and give your new protégée relief by means of correspondence. What objection could there be? It is worth trying. The change from obsessional to hysterical symptoms seems to point to an inner progress in sexual organization, and is favourable rather than otherwise. (I have just had to turn down a similar case.) Obsessional neuroses are not particularly accessible, if their treatment is not sufficiently intensive; they always yield a rich harvest, but a successful cure is not generally part of it.

The explanation of the symptoms described can only be the one given by you: premature father-fixation, interrupted by hostile impulses. Conflict between male and female position, then renunciation of female role, homosexual object-choice in identification with the father, finally perhaps a renewed attempt at a genital organization. The constitutional factor of course predominant. Treatment in writing can be neither short nor easy.

Many thanks for the confirmation of your touchingly charming act of carelessness for the Everyday Life. Yet another reminder from the Verlag. Have you not got a short work on the Unconscious over and above the publication in the Zeitschrift für Sexualwissenschaft?

Rank has gone to Switzerland to meet Jones, to make propaganda for the Verlag, and perhaps to act as sponsor to the new Swiss group.120

With warmest greetings,
Yours,
Freud