Letter from Sigmund Freud to Ernest Jones, February 10, 1913

10 February 1913
Vienna, IX. Berggasse 19

My dear Jones,

I could not answer your kind letter, as I had to make some observations on the woman you are so fond of and who is getting dearer to me daily. You will not have expected that my affection or my esteem will have suffered much by our last experience, the more as it turned out to be after your explications, or you know not enough of me. To be sure I cannot envy you or give you right. I did not understand your acting in this way in the most inappropriate moment, when she was rapidly approaching recovery, but even then I was sure you could not have done something simply mean and treacherous. I waited for explanation and clung to neurosis in the meantime.

Now I think I can understand it, as you exposed the matter and I may perhaps even know something more about it.

Now for her. It was a tremendous shock at first. She got the old pains, not very strong though, raised the morphia at once to 4 from 1.2 and renounced treatment. You remember, she identified ΨA, your and my own person and so she had to break off with all three of them. Yet there was a thread left undamaged between her and myself. I got hold of it and persuaded her to go on not for your sake but in her own interest. She agreed and it came to be right. We are down to 0.8 at this time, no pains at all, resistance much diminished, her behaviour almost normal in the affair which was even more intricate than you can surmise, and she lends an