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19 July 1922
42 York Terrace, London
Dear Professor,
I must disturb your summer rest with a few business matters, though I hope they are of a simple nature. To begin with the least important, Hiller tells me that you disapproved of an article by Johnson,1 and I should like your definite decision about this. The article was accepted at the request of the Society, on whom, including Mrs. Riviere, it made a very good impression when it was read. The interest of it seemed to be the attempt to devise an ideal nomenclature, and the evidence that such attempts were strongly influenced by unconscious factors.
Now that the charge of the Sammlungen has been left solely to me I have carefully reconsidered the whole question and wish to lay my opinion before you. (I hasten to add that this process does not involve a moment's delay in proceeding with the publishing, which is going on satisfactorily). The matter is not so simple as simply publishing one particular book, for a set of Collected Papers has certain characteristics of its own, such as re-arrangement, etc.. One thing I am sure of, that it would make a bad impression on the English scientific public to issue such a collection in small volumes, as had to be done in German. The usual size of such volumes in English would be from 800 to 1200 pages, and though I do not propose anything like this I think the volumes should not be less than 400 pages.2 In the second place I am satisfied with the grouping of all the sections except one, that entitled Theoretisches, which is very mixed in content. I agree with Mrs. R. that the long Geschichte article3 should be taken from this and added to the first section (Einleitung), and that Die Zwei Prinzipien and the Narcissism article4 be extracted and added to the Metapsychologie. I would also add the Triebumsetzungen to the latter,5 and put six others in the Angewandte section (Tatbestandsdiagnostik, Aufklärungen, kulturelle Sexualmoral, Kinderlügen, Analcharakter, and Traum und Telepa