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Budapest, June 3, 1911
Dear Professor,
On Monday I have a court proceeding. So I will postpone my trip to Vienna until the next Sunday. At least you will be able to have a good rest, which you deserve after the trials of the last few weeks.
The idea about symbol formation is taking shape more and more.1
All at once it becomes clear to me why children don't understand symbolism
(they don't need any yet), why they have no sense for jokes, why their dreams are pure wish-fulfillment dreams; finally, why children and adults do not understand or misunderstand one another.
As long as one is naive (native), i.e., not repressed, one needs no indirect language. On the other hand, the child neglects small differences, that is to say, it remodels its world according to its desire (pleasure principle). Only “the necessity of life” teaches the child also to pay attention to small differences (reality principle).
This developmental process is disturbed by education (repression), however, and, as a consequence of this, it is uneven. Certain ideas are disturbed in their development (see: Obscene Words).—In place of them, the ideas which are equated with the repressed in infancy undergo symbolic overemphasis. Hence, the domination of symbolism in the ideational sphere of the sexual.
In order for the symbolic alignment of two ideas to come about, in addition to physical homogeneity (similarity), the same feeling-tone of the two ideas (tooth pulling, castration) is probably also necessary. Perhaps even the latter is the more important, and two things which are quite dissimilar in their physical manifestation can be symbolically equated if they are toned by the same feeling.
Kind regards,