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25 June 1913
Pension Gerö, Lipót-körút 10
Budapest V
Dear Professor Freud,
Thank you very much for your kind letter. As to my wife, she will have so much to do in London this summer that she certainly deserves a quiet time now, especially after the stormy period she has passed through. Perhaps she will come to Budapest next month.
I feel a special responsibility in passing an opinion about your latest work, for I am probably the only person besides yourself who is familiar with both subjects, the totemism and tabu literature on the one side and ψα on the other; Robertson Smith's is the only book you quote that I haven't read; to be sure, an important exception.1 Well, I feel calmly and absolutely certain that your theory is perfectly correct, and that it will stand any test the future may submit it to. What the immediate general impression produced may be is another matter, concerning which I have no opinion, and it may well be that my ready acceptance is greatly helped by personal inclinations in the direction of the theory; I have for years believed that the Oedipus situation originated in actual conflicts between the pretensions of the sons and the jealousy of the sire, these being later converted into inner conflicts, and that we have there the central problem of the development of civilisation (Cf. the last sentence of my Hamlet essay).2 That being so, I can see no possible solution to the problems of totemism other than the one you offer.
I feel that I should express the following idea which forces itself on me, namely that your judgement of the value and correctness of the theory is affected by the fact of your being the author—far more than is generally the case in your work, which suggests that this one has an unusual personal significance for you. The external situation does not explain to me altogether