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Dr. S. Ferenczi
vii., Nagydiofa-Utca 3.
Budapest, February 14, 1930
Dear Professor,
I know you too well to fear that my long silence will be falsely construed; you will understand that the reply to your letter has required such a long reaction time. It was no small thing for me to see in black and white that an “ill feeling” could arise between us.—After the fact, I can tell you that my first reaction, which I didn't want to express by letter, was one of defiance. Now that this has been overcome, I can reply to you without affect that it is, in my view, not a matter of the reactivation of my earlier neurosis, but rather the fact that I could finally tell you that a certain inhibition on my part has constantly existed; I must rather designate the ability to tell you about it as progress, as the beginning of a freer, more uninhibited intercourse between us, thus, the end of a “subneurotic” epoch.
The inhibition of which I speak here has certainly contributed much to the fact that I was unable to give wholly free expression not only to my personal feelings, but also to certain scientific views. These are now beginning to consolidate, and my Oxford lecture, which I enclose in fair copy, is the beginning of this process.
In addition to this, my self-analysis led me to the insight that the childish sensitivity toward your facetious allusion to my getting old was actually the expression of a deep inner unease about my bodily ailments. My nightly rest disturbances (respiratory disturbance and spells of headache) have been returning almost uninterruptedly for more than a year and make me fear premature aging. Also at this moment I am writing early, at five o'clock in the morning, frightened by the symptoms that I have