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27 October 1928
Tegel
Dear Jones,
You are right in assuming that Breuer's reports of his case date from about 1884.1 Our relationship began gradually about 1882; in 1885 I went to Paris.
I am very glad to hear that you will write the biographical essay for Encyclopaedia Britannica. However, I am very surprised that the editors want to replace my own presentation of & by another, which is to be signed by me, without my knowing anything about it or having given my consent. If you could protest on my behalf, I would be very pleased.
I have not yet received the reviews of Illusion.
We are traveling to Vienna on the thirty-first. I am bringing with me an improvement, which I hope will ease my performance considerably. However, one cannot speak of an elimination of the complaint, and my speech is “far from perfect.”2 They only promise that it will yet improve. Eitingon's optimism obeys an inner need and is far removed from reality.
If London and Vienna were really closer, I should certainly have asked you several questions about your and your wife's mourning, which a letter cannot accommodate. Renunciation has become a habitual practice with me in the last few years.
Regarding your comment on the mechanism of the Trauerarbeit, I should say that we are not very much at variance. My question was just, why is withdrawal of libido in mourning so painful, whereas it succeeds so easily under other circumstances? My answer was that one has to bring recognition of the reality principle to every single point of the libido, and this, in fact, is in agreement with your formulation: against one's own will. I envisaged that, in each individual case, one then has the choice of dying