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Vienna, April 8, 1915
Dear friend,
I really think that is too much honor, so I could hardly be pleased about it. I fail to recognize any similarity in me to that great man who was quoted by you, and, in fact, I do so not out of modesty; I would be enough of a friend of the truth, or let us rather say: objectivity, to dismiss this virtue. I can explain a piece of your impression from the necessary similarity of the impression if someone, for example, were to look at two painters with respect to how they handle brush and palette. This would say nothing about the relative value of the paintings. Another piece probably originated from a comparison which comes from personal impression and one which is relevant to the current situation. Allow me to confess that I have found in myself only one quality of the first rank, a kind of courage, which is unshaken by convention. Incidentally, you yourself belong among those who are productive and must also have observed in yourself the mechanism of production, the succession of daringly playful fantasy and relentlessly realistic criticism.
Lately I have been working regularly; I finished the second article of my synthetic series. It has to do with repression, the first has to do with instincts and their vicissitudes; my favorite will be the third, which deals with the unconscious and its assessment, with which you are acquainted.1 As the editor, you will be receiving the galleys of the first two very soon. I don't have anything written now, except illegible stuff in drafts. I want to send you a saucy lecture, inspired by gallows humor, which I gave here in the Jewish Society (in press).2 But please send it right back, since it is in great demand as a very popular piece and is available only in the singular.
My productivity probably has to to with the great improvement in my intestinal activity. Now, whether I owe this to a mechanical factor, the hardness of the war bread, or to a psychic one, my of necessity altered relationship to mo