Letter from Sándor Ferenczi to Sigmund Freud, August 10, 1910

Budapest, August 10, 1910
VII., Erzsébet-körút 54

Freudtól
visszakèrtem ès kaptam
910. november1

Dear Professor,

Both halves of your last—very detailed and kind—letter gave me not only precise explanations of the chances for our vacation trip and about your internal and external situation but also renewed confirmation of an observation that can very freqently be made. The letter that you wrote late in the evening of August 2 is pervaded by distinct depression as well as by a feeling of indecision, of “laziness,” as you express it. You look for pretexts to avoid all kinds of decisions.—The postscript sounds quite different: you find the dunes “terribly pleasant,” whereas the day before you were still sorely missing the forests of the Alps. You make up your mind to go to Leyden in order to commit yourself early to the trip; on the day before you were—according to what you said in the letter—worlds away from even thinking about this active intervention into the course of events.

I know that this observation is banal. But it is still not explained, no more than are the normal periodic swings of emotional life that return with astronomical punctuality. I am thinking here not at all of Fliess's periods, but rather of the well-known fact that there is such a thing as a morning, afternoon, evening, and night mood.

I have often reflected on this matter and have gathered observations in me and in my patients, and I have come to the conclusion that this question cannot be settled by light (sun) and by physiology alone. It could have to do with the daily buildup and destruction of a complicated psychological edifice whose foundations may certainly be purely physiological. I find the physiological basis in sexuality and think about the matter somewhat like this: every movement, every bodily sensation and every sense arousal, indeed, every phase of metabolism has a pleasurable component (one could