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Budapest, October 18, 1910
VII., Erzsébet-körút 54
Dear Professor,
I thought I heard from you that you had along in your travel bag the letter in which I ventured to make a few very hypothetical attempts at explaining the problem of the pleasurable character of dreams; I therefore presume that you still have it. In the meantime, what I said there has been some what consolidated for me after reading “Jokes,” only I can no longer reproduce the content of the letter precisely enough. I would therefore like to ask you to send it back for me to use temporarily (if it's not too much effort for you to look for it).
Altogether, I have not had such pleasure in a long time as I now have in studying your book on jokes. I am reading it again from an entirely different perspective, and I find great correspondences, intimations of things that came much later or are only now in process.—I was even tempted, in reading the section on smut,1 to write a small article on the psychology of the obscene for the Zentralblatt. Perhaps I will do it.2
Otherwise I am not doing badly. I wasn't able to keep the engineer (Fliess's friend); he is over fifty, and perhaps I didn't approach him in an appropriate manner. Even the paranoid is striking—he is frightened by the neurotic anxiety that is surfacing in him through analysis. So now I have more time and am happy about it.
The seminar is going along. Last week Dr. Hevesi, the director of the Hungarian National Theater, gave a lecture about ψα. observations in the theater.
I have amicably come to terms with the Vienna Society. Jung left out my name (perhaps out of excessive consideration for Hungarian particularism).3
Kindest regards to all your dear ones and to you.
Yours truly,
Ferenczi