Letter from Sándor Ferenczi to Sigmund Freud, October 26, 1915

Pápa, October 26, 1915

Dear Professor,

You will probably not be surprised if I write only a few new things from here and treat only two themes, my ability to work—and the condition of my health.

The first has increased. In arranging the notes that I made in the course of the past year, the plan has formed by itself for a series of essays entitled Bioanalytic Essays; it could be about fifteen to twenty papers, which could ultimately fill a book. The first paper will be generally “On the Justification of Psychoanalytic Points of View in the Biological Sphere of Knowledge” and will confirm the naturalness of and the necessity for the metapsychological and metabiological way of looking at things. The second will treat anal and urethral impotence; appended to that something about the physiology of ejaculation. The third [will be] about the amphimixis of partial instincts, as an introduction to the ontogeny of genitality. Then (after treating some bioanalytic individual interpretations), I am thinking of contributing a few essays on the phylogeny of genitality. One essay each on sleep, laughing and crying, hypnotic superperformances [überleistungen], on the feeling of being tickled, fainting, on the phylogeny of secondary sex characteristics, etc. should be published. Finally, a comprehensive work on regression and progression in biology.1—During the last few