Letter from Sigmund Freud to Ernest Jones, September 27, 1926

27 September 1926
Semmering

Dear Jones,

We are leaving for Wien after some delightful weeks in this place.

I very much appreciate your last remarks on “Laienanalyse”. Glad to know I have at least made some impression on you. I expected you to take the other side of the question. Of course you are invited to give your judgment in a report on my booklet, to be published in the Zeitschrift. Perhaps others will do so too and the ensuing discussion may be of interest for all of us. You have justly guessed what my real intention is, but I saw no obligation to proclaim it to the public at this moment. To be sure fate will decide over the ultimate relation between ΨA and medicine, but that does not imply that we should not try to influence fate, attempt to shape it by our own efforts.

I am always glad to see Rickman. Regarding my health I dare say I am now better than I appear while it was the contrary before. I am suffering much less from the plate but my speech is more inhibited—by technical difficulties—than it used to be.

You too may have been puzzled by the lack of logics in Rank's statement that he is on the best of terms with me adducing as a proof that he made me a costly present. The conclusion would have been justified, if I had given the present to him. As it was, his gift sprang from a mixture of different motives, the oppressing feeling of owing so much to me, even in money, a reaction of gratitude or rather against gratitude, a tendency to boast of his newly acquired riches and a self-destructive impulse to spend all he is earning, which appears also in other doings of his. I am not at all sure what the final result of his career may be, he does not belong to those easy-going scoundrels, to whom success in life is assured.

Although absent from the opening of the Clinic to-morrow, I am all with you and feel the importance of the day.

With kindest regards for you and your family.

Freud