Letter from Sigmund Freud to Ernest Jones, September 22, 1912

22 September 1912
Rome

My dear Jones,

I am glad I have received all your letters as you have mine and hasten to answer the two last ones from your side before we can exchange writing for talking.

I am very sensible [sensitive] indeed to your kindness shown during my last troubles and glad to let you know that my daughter is slowly improving even above the level when I left her, while I feel strengthened and relieved by the air and the impressions of this divine town. In fact I have been more happy than healthy at Rome, but my forces are coming back and I feel

What you construed about the Verdichtung of the two daughters sounds so ingenious that I dare not contradict it,2 the more so as it gave you occasion for promises which touch my ear like music might another man. Of course there is a great difficulty if not impossibility in recognising actual psychical processes in [the]3 his own person. To me the physical side must be more evident, the sudden intolerance of the heart-muscle for tobacco and it seems even more for wine, of which I could not forego small doses, while in Tirol and Italy. My last improvement here is due to a great restriction of that delicious roman wine I was indulging in.

Now let it be enough of personal complaints and hopes. As for the scientific interest between us, I completely agree with you, that there is no big danger of a separation between Jung and me. I began reading his paper until I knew the plot of it, p. 174.4 There you will find, he is simply bagging the question and misunderstanding me. I never obliterated or changed the meaning of libido, but stuck to my first definition all over. I threw up the problem whether paranoia can be explained by the retraction of the libidinous components, left it unsolved, but pointed to a certain way of solving it. He is proclaiming without further proofs, that libido