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Budapest [undated,
presumably summer 1912]1
VII., Erzsébet-körút 54
Dear Professor,
I feel obliged to report on events within me and around me. In general, I had some more insight into illness, with respect to both present as well as past events.
First, I must confirm that my cruelty and severity toward Frau G. could be infantile revenge against my mother. My mother was, up to my father's
death, strict and, according to the way I felt at the time and as I do now, often unjust. I have conscious recollections of “fantasies of being abandoned” and bitter fantasies of revenge from my seventh to eighth year.— Poor Frau G. has to atone for everything.—I totally appreciate consciously her noble, magnanimous, self-sacrificing behavior in this, the most difficult time of her life—but my inner emotion remains absent or manifests itself only negligibly. With me it is as with so many people who cannot weep at the death of their father or mother. I am glad if I can squeeze out a tear with great effort or if, as was the case when I read G.'s especially touching letter of farewell—some sadness and the feeling of severe loss is stirred up in me.—Along with this infantile desire for revenge, however, my behavior may also in part be influenced by the fact that in the last four years, since I have been testing myself analytically, I have actually been carrying on a continuing struggle for liberation against my maternal fixation. During this time I have constantly sought to come to grips with painful insights that have to do with Frau G.'s age and the sexual intercourse with her that is not entirely satisfying physically. Thus, I have only distributed the pain that I am now missing over a longer period of time, but I have not been spared it altogether.
I have up to now conscientiously carried out the plan that originated in the Türkenschanzpark.2 Monday evening I gave a lecture. Frau G. and Elma were present. Elma was very disconcerted and was prepared for something bad when I told her she