You do not currently have permission to view the full text for this document. Please sign in to an account with an active subscription or contact support.
Internationale Zeitschrift für Ärztliche Psychoanalyse
Budapest, August 5, 1913
Dear Professor,
I find “Dr. Neuer's” paper (probably actually Adler's work) very pertinent; most of his remarks about the hypocritical way in which Jung reigns as a Bayard1 of psychoanalysis and attacks you in all essential points (infantile sexuality, the unconscious, fixation, etc.) are proper characterizations.—The Zurichers will soon stand there in isolation and very
soon present the mystical side of their being (astrology); that is the only “original” thing in their conception. With that, however, they will make themselves innocuous to the cause of ΨA.
I have suddenly decided (led astray by my reading of Jung's lectures) to give a lecture at the Congress about the psychology of conviction;2 I have already notified Jung of this.—My lecture will have many points of contact with that of Jones3 (which has turned out to be excellent), and it will attempt to prove that only proper psychoanalysis, which permits one really to live out the different psychic experiences by reviving the memory traces, or (when this is not possible) by means of transference to the present, is suited to allow convictions to arise in people; whereas all other psycho-therapeutic measures (suggestion, Dubois,4 Adler, Jung) are unsuited to this. I will use this opportunity to 1.) discuss Jung's false assumption that you have given up (and not just expanded) the trauma theory, 2.) to test the psychology of “evidence” [on the basis of experiences with obsessional neurotics with doubting mania].5 The subject can be formulated on various levels; I will make an effort to be as brief as possible.
I find that you have very pointedly characterized my mother in the single sentence that you wrote about her. She is remarkably fresh, mentally (for her age).
I will not attend the wedding in my family after all. Instead, I will possibly spend two to three days in Vienna to get my nose straightened out before the vacation. I hope to a