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Internationale Zeitschrift für Ärztliche Psychoanalyse
Budapest, July 7, 1913
Dear Professor,
I just filled my dry fountain pen and immediately picked up two sheets of stationery, because I had the feeling I had much to write. The occasion is sad enough: today is my fortieth birthday. This date seems to have activated much in me, and the affect overcame the writing inhibition— which you must have noticed long ago—and which has prevented me for so long from talking about myself. (At our meetings in Vienna what happens to me is similar to what happens to people in analysis: “Nothing comes to my mind”! In Vienna I usually feel in elevated spirits; the big thing that occupies us scientifically captures me completely, and when you say a few reassuring words in response to my personal communications I feel quite in agreement and am happy to return to our scientific subjects. Here at home I then have the “sentiment d'incomplétude”1 (to speak French with Jung and Janet)2 —the feeling “as if”3 we should have talked much more about me.)
I was quite honest when I told you that I am happy to see the matter with Elma settled without me; and yet I was extraordinarily saddened when I learned—after my return from Vienna—that the marriage with that American is really going to take place.4 —Then, when on the day before the young man's departure for America Elma still didn't say “yes” to the man (certainly not just out of consideration for me, on whom she is no longer counting, but rather because she was hurt by something or other that the American said); so, when the road was opened for me, the old scruples returned in me, and an inner anxiety about the future restrained me from making any advances—in fact, I immediately found Elma less desirable than at the time when she seemed unattainable to me. This strange condition of love is certainly neurotic.
Meanwhile, Frau G. is tirelessly championing Elma's cause with me; she sees in it the only possible and—as she says—favorable solution for