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Vienna, March 25, 1923
Dear Doctor,
To begin with congratulations on the publication of the It79. I like the little book very much. I consider it a matter of merit to put people's noses up against the fundamentals of analysis from which they constantly try to withdraw. The work, moreover, argues the theoretically important point of view which I have dealt with in my own forthcoming work The Ego and the Id80.
The public will of course react to it with even more aversion and indignation than it did to The Seeker of Souls which could be taken as an artistic treatment of the undesirable. Your self-esteem will hardly be affected by this.
The discourse on Aristotle you sent me I find rather unpalatable. A sentence like: ‘the an sich lives in the what, in so far as this lives in it’ is sufficient for my miserable philosophical sense to paralyse understanding and judgment for good. I have to rely on your opinion that the paper of your disciple has produced certain results. I find his own presentation obscure enough.
I will wait for you to let me know what to do with the essay in question.
Warmest regards to you and my translator
Yours Freud
Das Buch vom Es (The Book of the It). Dr. Oskar Pfister mentions the following remarks made by Freud, in Schweizerische Zeitschrift für Psychologie, Vol. IX, No. 2, p. 153: ‘Freud told me soon after the publication of Das Buch vom Es (1923) in conversation: “Groddeck is quite certainly four fifths right in his belief that organic illnesses can be traced to the It and perhaps in the remaining fifth he is also right.’”