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14 November 1912
Pension White
2 Piazza dei Cavalleggieri
Firenze
Dear Professor Freud,
I got today a letter from my wife of a very different tone, full of sunniness and life, and you may imagine how much it cheered me. The other was evidently an outburst of feeling, which perhaps will do her good; she ought to pour it on to you as well, but no doubt she will do so. I find her wonderful good (“brav”)1 in the endeavours she makes, do you also?
I have news. This morning came a long letter from Putnam, from which I make the following abstracts.: “What Dr. Jung said, in effect, was that while he still held to the importance of the ψα technique, he had come to rate the infantile fixations as of far less importance than formerly as an etiological factor, and, indeed, as I understood him, as an almost negligible factor in most cases—though I hardly think he could really maintain this if he were pushed for a positive opinion. At any rate, the point on which he seems now inclined to lay emphasis is the difficulty of meeting new problems and environmental conditions which arise at the time of the actual onset of the neurosis. It seems to me that we all recognise the importance of these influences, but I cannot as yet feel anything is won through minimising the significance of the other factor. ….. The point which seemed to me to indicate most strongly the idea of a breaking-off on his part was that he said he thought the significance of the whole conception of infantile sexual tendencies in Freud's sense had been overrated; that all persons, sick or well, have about the same phantasies, and that he did not any longer believe that the sensations which a nursing child (Säugling) has could be classified as sexual in any sense, but only as related to nutritional necessities. This does not coincide with my present beliefs, but of course it will go far (although possibly in an unfortunate way) towards gaining adherents for the ψα method. Perhaps, after all, that is the important thing