You do not currently have permission to view the full text for this document. Please sign in to an account with an active subscription or contact support.
Budapest, July 9, 1910
VII., Erzsébet-körút 54
Dear Professor,
My birthday the day before yesterday—my 37th—released a few thoughts in me that I don't want to keep secret from you, first of all because I know that you are interested in my personal fate, and second, because they are—I believe—of general interest. The thoughts are a continuation of your pessimistic line of reasoning about the immutability and unchanging nature of men.—I must contradict it.—I have already often thanked you for beautifying my profession, in fact, my whole life, through the Ψ-analytic way of looking at things. But if I compare my inner psychic existence before and after Ψα. insight, I must regard the most valuable thing to be precisely that inner change that you deny. It was only through Ψα. that I became a man from a child, only since its mastery in me can I better subordinate the “pleasure principle” to the “reality principle” and better inhibit the senseless waste of affect. Infantile sensitivity plays a much smaller role in me than before; I have more or less reconciled myself to the thought of dying and being ill. I learned to treat and regard human beings as sick people, and I bear them no ill will because of their malice: they can't help it. I inhibit ambitious daydreams by tracing them back to their infantile roots.
I am also more optimistic than you in another respect. I believe that Ψα. honesty can be effected, not only among friends but also among life's companions of various genders. The analytic association with Frau G. is making decided progress, after at times overcoming very great resistances.—As the “ménage à trois” on the George Washington1 became a signficant experience for me and provided the occasion for unshackling my infantile complexes, so did the visit of a sister from Italy2 prove to be a ferment for Frau G., which activated her heretofore inadmissible impulses of jealousy, hate, etc. Two people get along easily. It is not until one gets to three that one constitute