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30 January 1912
407 Brunswick Avenue
Toronto
Dear Professor Freud,
Your eagerly awaited and exceedingly welcome letter has just come. I take the inhibition indicated in it as the best token of your kindly feeling towards me, and I was greatly moved by this. How well you understand to bind men to you with ties of affection and gratitude; many an enemy has remarked with envy on the devotion you inspire in your followers, and their observation is quite correct. This especially holds in the most difficult task of all, when, as in my case, you have to check wrong tendencies. My attitude towards this is best illustrated by the following story about my first meeting with you (at Salzburg). I need not describe my anticipatory feelings, for you can easily imagine them. Mingled with them was an affect that I had always experienced on having to do with any authority or master, from school up, namely a certain dread and especially a fear of being blamed, of being found out in wrong-doing; this arose from a strong guilt-complex, the ultimate origin I now know well, but which until of late had given me more suffering than anything else in life. Well I had of course many personal impressions of you, but none was more vivid than an acute realisation, experienced for the first time in my life, that here was a man who, in spite of his authority and rank, would understand and not blame. I expressed it at the time to Trotter by saying that you were the only man of position I had ever met who knew what it was to feel young in heart, meaning that you had the power of comprehending the trials and difficulties of youth. I felt at the same time that I would listen to criticism and guidance from you in a way that I had never before been willing to from anyone. The more I have got to know you the plainer has become that first impression, and never more so than in your last letter, so that it is an instance where I can plume myself on my intuition. I can therefore assure you that any criticism y