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Vienna, January 11, 1915
IX., Berggasse 19
Dear friend,
The telegram was correct. I didn't simply want to telegraph: Can't come, and I decided to add something that wouldn't make you think that a particular obstacle got in the way. Now, the special thing was that two days earlier suddenly an eruption of ideas had appeared—in very much the same way as you described about yourself—after a long pause and of such significant content that it was at first as though I had been blinded. It had to do with the metapsychology of consciousness, nothing less.
So I promised to share these things with you in a comprehensive and orderly fashion. When I went at it two days later, the rude awakening came. The thing resisted any depiction and presented such frightful gaps and difficulties that I broke off, and now I also withdraw my promise. I won't send you anything for the time being, perhaps not even later, because since then no more subterranean eruptions have been observed. Only so much proceeds from the fact that these μΨ [metapsychological] riddles still interest me; nothing else does.
I am now very curious about your productions, but I don't want to influence you prematurely in a disturbing way. I very much wish for you to be retransferred home, if there is an equal certainty connected with that as there is now.
Nothing new here except for the Italian translation of the Five Lectures,1 which came out very pretty.
Herr Dukes, about whom you warned me, has not appeared. Your friend Bródy will be well received.
Kind regards; wishing you immeasurably much patience, I am
Yours truly,
Freud