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Vienna, 5.6.1917
Dear Colleague,
I have not had a letter for a long time which so pleased, interested, and stimulated me as to make me drop the politeness due to a stranger and adopt analytical frankness in my answer to it.
I shall therefore make the experiment: I understand that you are requesting me urgently to supply you with an official confirmation that you are not a psychoanalyst, that you do not belong to the members of the group, and will be able to call yourself something special, and independent. Obviously I am doing you a service if I push you away from me to the place where Adler5, Jung6 and others stand. Yet I cannot do this; I have to claim you, I have to assert that you are a splendid analyst who has understood for ever the essential aspects of the matter. The discovery that transference and resistance are the most important aspects of treatment turns a person irretrievably into a member of the wild army. No matter if he calls the unconscious ‘It’. Let