Letter from Sigmund Freud to Sándor Ferenczi, August 5, 1913

Marienbad, August 5, 1913

Dear friend,

I am unmistakably in a toxic condition similar to the one you saw me in last year, and even more similar to the one I had at the beginning of the first Karlsbad cure. Moody, irritable, tired, but this time no weakness of the heart. Always ruminating over the same dark thoughts, taking little

things hard, aversion to food; but after filling my stomach, I regularly brighten up.

In this state of intoxication, the stupid nonsense by Neuer that I sent you has weighed especially heavily on me. I have now read Jung's paper myself and I find it good and innocuous, beyond my expectation. Jones is quite right with his criticism; the errors are palpable, the comparisons slanted; much that he presents in his aggressive tone as discovery is, moreover, congruent with our intellectual property; but the contradictions remain entirely on ΨA's ground. Much toward the end about therapy, transference, etc. is even excellent. What is stupid is his insistence on inertia [Trägheit] as an etiological factor, instead of the Oedipus complex. Inertia is a universal law, even more general than the Oedipus complex! On the whole, I have very much overestimated the danger from a distance. The connections to Adler are slight. Only Adler's hawk's-eye view could find a reason to claim priority there. It would be quite right if Adler and Aiglon1 tore each other up a bit with their beaks on the sidelines. We won't come between them.

Another recent adventure is an impertinent letter from the confidence man Friedländer, whose integrity has been certified by a tribunal, and who wants to sue me because of a statement I made about him to Binswanger.2 I hope my sources won't leave me in the lurch. You can imagine how much I would otherwise make of this affair. So, now I have finished gossiping, without awaiting your reply to my last letter.

Cordially,

Freud

On the 13th of the month, S. Martino.3