Letter from Sándor Ferenczi to Sigmund Freud, May 18, 1910

Budapest, May 18, 1910
VII., Erzsébet-körút 54

Dear Professor,

A woman patient whom I had to throw out some time ago in the state of transference used the catastrophe threatened by the comet as a moving farewell to me.1 I myself belong to those optimists—more correctly skeptics—who don't want to believe that such a great cataclysm will happen precisely during my lifetime, and I will go ahead and go to sleep. That is, I was about to do so, when the idea “freely came to mind” that I haven't written to you for a long time.—Naturally, it soon came out that I do have something to share with you—and if one wants something, then such a far-fetched association (Halley's comet) suffices to bring the idea to mind.

For yesterday I was invited into a private circle of sociologists to give a lecture about your theories.2 It was the most intelligent and understanding audience that I have heretofore had the opportunity to address. ^That must have animated me to the extent that, without any preparation, I put together such a good, concise summary of what distinguishes psychoanalysis from every earlier psychology as I could certainly not put on paper now. When I think about what I had to say in conclusion about the anticipated social effects of your ideas, the association with the comet becomes clear to me. In fact, I can't go to sleep so easily, because—you see, such a great revolution in psychology and in everything connected with it could arrive in my lifetime, and, in defiance of every reckoning of probability, with my co-workers, no matter how modest they may be. As a schooled obsessional thinker, I do have to consider: “If one came, then the other must come as well”—namely, the comet. On the other hand, of course, skepticism stirs in me and says: if one has come, then the other will probably not arrive.—

But this time skepticism has been somewhat delayed: the letter is already