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Budapest, November 18 [1916]
6 A.M.1
(First reaction to your letter.)2
Dear Professor,
I know that I no longer have the right to speak to you as if to my physician, that I must not speak freely and out of context but rather measure my words against reality. But I can't refrain from taking an hour one last time (is it really the last time?).
Went to sleep today after midnight and awoke at four o'clock with heart palpitations. I have been suffering from them increasingly since Gizella's refusal.
(I notice something forced, unreal-dramatic in my manner of writing. Does all my sadness conceal my joy about the fact that I am becoming free?)
It is now six o'clock. My reading was able neither to put me to sleep nor to amuse me. Perhaps analytic monologue will bring me inner peace. Naturally I thought (with the malicious distrust of all analysands) that it was a trick on your part when you gave your definitive view of my relationship with Gizella. You wanted to free me from the suggestive influence of your earlier view (to marry G.), so that I can decide freely.
I don't need to tell you right off that I don't seriously believe that. One does not normally dissemble anything of the kind with an analysand—I never do that, either.
How, do you think, would my neurosis after Gizella's refusal be proof of my not wanting to?
Do you think that the symptoms originated from the conflict between piety and joy over getting away?