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Dr. S. Ferenczi
vii., Nagydiofa-Utca 3.
Budapest, November 6, 1929
Dear Professor,
It is high time that I call myself and you—where possible—to account about the probable causes of the extreme sparseness and apparent flimsiness of my correspondence.
I think it has essentially to do with a temporary calling upon of even highly significant libidinal relations for the purpose of some kind of inner process.
Two thoughts [Einfälle] may illuminate the nature of these things. My relationship to the psychoanalytic movement (and politics) seems to be less intensive (especially since the relative calm in the question of lay analysis); in place of this, interest is turning again to purely scientific problems. A product of this change was the Oxford lecture, which was, however, only an indication of the individual observations made in generalities. (These are developing and deepening—I believe—constantly.)
The other (purely personal) thought is the evidently shocking impression that your statement, which was made in passing, to the effect that my appearance was an indication of premature senility, made on me. My life drive evidently reacted to that with defiance and contradiction; it threw itself zealously upon unsolved problems of psychoanalysis and in this way wants to display its youthfulness. But it is not completely out of the question that this is a case not only of such reaction formation, but also of the reexperiencing of long-repressed intellectual and other strivings, which could also contain and produce something really valuable.
A certain anxiety (which ought to be well known to you—you did call it to my attention) about coming into conflict with you even in questions of the finest detail is contributing to my taciturnity; I want to wait and see about the growth of certain ideas before I divulge them; I am struggling with doubts and am impaired by the idea that my communications must be firmly fixed in order to make an impression, and not, perhaps, to be dismissed lightly.
I