Letter from Ernest Jones to Sigmund Freud, August 15, 1913

15 August 1913
13 Princes St., Cavendish Sq.
London

Dear Professor Freud,

This contains merely a few disconnected notes on points I have recently come across, and which may interest you.

Zur Theorie der Angst! Bacon writes: “We know diseases of stoppings and suffocations are the most dangerous in the body; it is not much otherwise in the minde”.1 (This might be quoted by the Baconians as proof of his psychological insight).

Relation between desire and anxiety. In English we use the latter word just as often to mean desire as to mean [fire]2 fear (e.g. I am anxious to meet him = desirous, eager, etc.).

There is no new thing under the sun. Freimark, in his book on occultism, and Wirth, in his on Somnambulismus,3 frankly hold that hypnotism is purely a sexual rapport, and that the effect of it solely depends on this fact. Again I discover that the veteran Hughlings Jackson made this sage remark: “Find out all about dreams and then you will understand insanity.”4

I suppose you know the passage in Boccaccio: “Who willeth thee ill dreameth thee ill.”5 It is of course also found elsewhere in proverbs.

A little philology. First re the magnetic rapport in hypnosis. The word “coition” (English for coitus) used to be used till the 17th century to indicate the attraction of a magnet for a metal.6 Re Ferenczi on friendship! Friend comes from the Sanscrit freond, which meant a lover, and till 1600