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Budapest, October 16, 1913
Dear Professor,
I freely admit that the motives which I gave as an explanation for my long silence are not adequate; I myself was and am not satisfied with them, but I didn't and don't know what to add. Consciously, sensitivity plays no part in this; as for the unconscious, I can't guarantee anything. When I—at times—look at myself objectively, I notice that things for which all rational explanation is missing often go on in a person. After the two “years of illness”—which were marked psychically and somatically by deep depressions, a kind of rejuvenation seems to have come over me, especially since the, apparently final, settlement of the Elma affair. Increase in libido and potency, cessation of hypochondria, tendency toward sociability and amusements (even of a primitive, infantile nature: theater, cinema, etc.), feeling of physical strength, humor and jocularity: my youthfulness, kept down for so long (and which I had already considered lost), comes to the fore in these symptoms. My attempt to explain it is as follows: When I declared myself for Elma, I tore myself forcefully away from Frau G., and in compensation I had to exaggerate Elma's good qualities. (At the time I was temporarily impotent with Frau G.) Then came the great disappointment with Elma; the path to Frau G. was at that time (inwardly) closed to me; the only remaining way out was to be ill (somatic-neurasthenic disturbances and hypochondria: my fixation points, evidently). Gradually (perhaps also with the aid of diversion through illness, i.e., of autoerotism), the rather stubborn tendency to get back with Elma abated; at the same time, Frau G.'s love and kindness made it possible for me once again to restore intellectual and tender relations with her. When I finally saw that Elma also no longer felt bound, I was inwardly freed of her—but without regaining the old, unconditional, enthusiastic love for Frau G.; what remained in me was more in the nature of friendship, tende