Letter from Sigmund Freud to Ernest Jones, March 27, 1923

27 March 1923
Vienna, IX. Berggasse 19

Dear Jones,

I got your letter to Lissa & Kann and thank you warmly for your kind behaviour in this matter. As you may judge from this incident, old age is growing upon me and the idea of the unavoidable exit of life dwells with me more steadily than before.

I read your manuscr.1 with great interest and dare say I learned quite a lot by it. I had no clear ideas on autosuggestion, suspected that cases like Coué's recent one2 might easily be revealed as masked suggestion of the common type and felt sure that if it existed it had to be understood on the basis of a temporal fusion of the Ego-ideal with the Ego. Now your remarks made me sure about these points and added a good deal of information I had not possessed. I think your paper is very clever and à propos besides. It is only your remarks on the mechanism of curing by analysis I consider not exhausting and thorough-going enough. The problem appears to be more complex and could be centred in another way.

I propose you should mitigate the ugly epitheta you join to the name of Coué.3 The nonsense of professional writers on psychopathology may make us relent towards the feats of a lay-amateur.

Now what am I to do with your manuskpt? Am I to send it back to you or have you got another copy?

Did you see MacCurdy's Problems of Dynamic Psychology?4 He is as impudent in his praise as in his criticism of my work and person. Lack of manners is a common character of these Americans.

Hoping you and your family are all right throughout,

yours affectionately

Freud