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Internationale Zeitschrift für Ärztliche Psychoanalyse
Budapest, June 4, 1914
Dear Professor,
Just read Narcissism with delight. Haven't had such pleasure in reading in a long time. But I also have to admit to you—and you can take this openness as a sign of the uninhibited inner freedom that is beginning to develop in me—that for years I have actually not been able to read anything thoroughly except your writings. Everything else is basically boring to me;
you have spoiled us greatly, given us too beautiful, powerful things to read, after which nothing else seems to taste good. It is impossible to stress all the passages that I liked, so I will refrain from doing so. In accordance with your request, however, I will designate a few passages which we discussed in part together, and which I have in part referred to in already published works. Of course, you should cite me only when you, too, have the feeling that these things did not originate independently of me. Our work should certainly also be called a “collective” one; each of us must renounce a portion of the satisfaction of our ambition.
I call your attention, for instance, to the trains of thought in the “introjection paper” (Jahrbuch I, 2), where being in love is described as inclusion of objects into the sphere of interest of the originally autoerotic libido. That would correspond roughly to the emanations of Narcissism.1 I described neurosis as an exaggeration of this process.2
On p. 430-2nd paragraph—I let the separation of the ego from the outer world originate from the conflicts of the originally unified mental life (through border displacements).3 —
In the paper “Stages in the Development of the Sense of Reality” I believe I was first to have referred to the infantile expressions of omnipotence (magic).4
The reference to the idealization of the criminal comes, I believe, from me.5