Letter from Sigmund Freud to Sándor Ferenczi, December 31, 1929

Vienna, December 31, 1929
IX., Berggasse 19

Dear friend,

You have certainly done the right thing in the matter with Dr. Feldmann, but that seems to me to be of little importance. It is a matter of more urgency to me to rectify an opinion to which you gave expression in your previous letter.

You consider yourself to have been finally cast aside since the election in Oxford. You are really mistaken. As far as we, Eitingon, Anna, and I, have any influence on the election, the intention continues to exist to confer the presidency on you. It only failed to occur this time in order not to immediately revive the arduously exorcised enmity of Jones, after we achieved success against him.

If I assume that he is similarly exercised against you as, according to what is attested to in the letter, you are against him, then caution seems to me not to be superfluous. In the meantime, you might think more calmly until the next election. Meanwhile, he has also, as you know, committed himself in the question of lay analysis.1

Anna thinks it is unmistakable that you are isolating yourself from us, and would like, as a countermeasure, to come to Budapest sometime and provoke your visit to Vienna in response. What do you think about that?

Science next time; today only kind regards for 1930 for you and Frau Gisela.

Yours,

Freud

I ought not to spare you a “Discontent.”