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Vienna, January 1, 1910
IX., Berggasse 19
Dear friend,
For half an hour I have been able to wish you happiness for the New Year, which I hereby do with all my heart, to you and to those dear to you.
A few hours after I turned you down for Christmas, lectures II and III came back from Worcester, as if to justify me in the face of my most intimate conscience. I was so preoccupied for the holidays, and during the same time I also revised the almost completely unaltered Theory of Sexuality for publication. My practice has picked up again since the holidays, but I am already recovered and cheerful.
Mathilde is on the Semmering with the little one,1 both are not doing badly, but also not very well. Everything seems to be going smoothly with my brother. The weather, of course, never comes from the quarter that one has been carefully observing.
I am just now awaiting a response from Jung regarding the Congress. I find your suggestions quite useful and don't see why you don't want to write to him about them as soon as the preliminary date has been set, which is not yet the case.
I will gladly entrust to you an insight that I had right around New Year's: the basic reason for religion is man's infantile helplessness. I will spare myself further details.
Jones is now excelling in rueful and contrite letters; his resistance finally seems to be broken. Pfister seems to be looking forward, in a childlike way, to his polemic with Foerster2 and is as cordial as ever. A few days ago a Moscow assistant, Ossipov,3 appeared with a few (unfortunately illegible)4 offprints, which seem to contain very careful reports. He is applying for the Moscow Academy prize, to be awarded in March, which has designated “psychoanalysis” as its theme, and he wants to come to Vienna in May.