Letter from Sigmund Freud to Ernest Jones, January 1, 1929

1 January 1929
Vienna, IX. Berggasse 19

Dear Jones,

I am writing to you on1 your fiftieth birthday instead of for it, as an enemy of all celebrations and formalities. Since I cannot put the letter off, I am obliged to make excuses for it, because I feel rather weak and incapacitated by influenza (not feverish), and the heightened narcissism of this condition will have been revealed to you through my reverting to Gothic script at the beginning of this letter.

Much that I could have written in reply to your letter must therefore be left unsaid. Not, however, the assurance that I have always counted you as one of my closer family members, and will continue to do so, which indicates—beyond all the discords that are seldom lacking within a family and have also not been lacking between us—a fund of tenderness that one can draw on time and again. I believe it began when I accompanied you once to the train station (in Worcester?). To be sure, I am not in the habit of expressing such affection freely, so that I easily seem indifferent, but my family knows better.

No, I will not write anything about youth and old age. Perhaps I shall not write anything at all, for the ease of conceptualization, which was once characteristic of me, has deserted me in old age and I am intelligent enough not to force myself. I readily acknowledge the great relief in my existence since Berlin, but something in me longs for further amelioration, and I am hopeful I will obtain it soon.

The reviews of Illusion have been placed in the archives run by Storfer. If you repeat your wish, you may have them. Your prognosis regarding the reaction in England was certainly right.

With most cordial wishes for your next decade.

Your faithful

Freud