Letter from Ernest Jones to Sigmund Freud, February 6, 1914

6 February 1914
69 Portland Court, London

Dear Professor Freud,

First as to the enclosed abstracts. They are (1) the translation of a verse by Sappho to a loved object, illustrating beautifully the relation between Libido and Angst by describing the symptoms of an Angstanfall, (2) an extract from the newspaper showing an interesting conception of Hamlet, and (3) the correspondence up to date on the ψα in the British Medical Journal, the chief letters being marked by a cross at the side. Will you please return these last. You will see that the paranoic Mercier, the son1 of a French father who defends “English clean-mindedness” and hates everything from the continent, has drawn a hornets' nest about his head. All the four letters this week, including one from Stoddart, the superintendent of Bethlem asylum and a well-known psychiatrist, are in our favour. The editor, however, has suppressed a letter from Eder (which I wrote) which simply crushed Mercier's quotations from Maeder, and was written in a very suave manner. On the whole, therefore, the situation is pretty good, and there is still some fair play left in old England2.

Not hearing from you for so long, I wondered if there were any fresh complications in the situation with Loe, which were taking time to adjust themselves. I am glad to hear she is behaving better, but am eager to hear all that has happened, whether Herbert Jones is still there, what they have decided, whether she is coming to London, etc.. She does not write to me at all.

I was glad you liked Louis, and was afraid you would find him too obvious. It interested me historically, and as shewing that ψα can make